William Sheehan is a psychiatrist, noted historian of astronomy, and amateur astronomer who has been an observer of Mercury and the other planets for many years. He has published numerous books on astronomy, including Planets and Perception (1988), The Immortal Fire Within: The Life and Work of Edward Emerson Barnard (1995), The Planet Mars (1996), Galactic Encounters and Celestial Shadows (both 2015) and Discovering Pluto (2018). Asteroid 16037 is named Sheehan in his honour.
"In this fully up-to-date and beautifully illustrated account,
Sheehan describes the growth of our knowledge of planet Mercury.
From the puzzles it posed for early astronomers to radar studies in
the 1960s, and from the first spacecraft fly-bys by the Mariner
10 probe in the 1970s to the latest images from the Mercury
Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging
(MESSENGER) orbital mission between 2011 and 2015, Mercury
has slowly been brought into clear focus."--Nelson Noven
"Fahrenheit: A Pop Science Book Club"
"Mercury, the Solar System's innermost planet, was spotted in
antiquity but remained an enigma until the 1960s. Science historian
Sheehan's portrait of the body (known in ancient Greece as the
"scintillating one" for its flicker) reveals it as an airless iron
world with an eccentric orbit. He interleaves discoveries, from
Johannes Kepler's prediction of a transit of Mercury in the
seventeenth century to NASA's MESSENGER probe, which relayed
gorgeous images and data (such as the presence of a wealth of
volatile compounds on the surface) before crashing on the planet in
2015."--Barbara Kiser "Nature"
"Sheehan has done a brilliant job. . . . Add to that top-quality
production standards and some lovely photographs from the
Mariner and MESSENGER missions, and the result is a
book that easily convinced me the Solar System's 'least
interesting' planet is still a pretty fascinating place."--Brian
Clegg "Popular Science (UK)"
"There are fewer than two dozen books devoted to Mercury and this
new one is easily the best introduction to the innermost planet,
published at a time when a new space mission is underway. In six
engaging chapters Sheehan takes us on an historical path of
discovery, from a time when the planet was merely a shy, naked-eye
enigma to the revelation of the iron-cored and battered rocky world
explored by Mariner and MESSENGER. . . . After a
thorough survey of the surface of Mercury--revealed in its
geographical and geological entirety only since 2009--Sheehan
concludes with an engaging history of the still more enigmatic
world of Vulcan, the mythical innermost planet. . . . Rich in
anecdote and illustration, this is a fine new book which is to be
strongly recommended."--Richard McKim "Journal of the British
Astronomical Association"
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