Mystery of the Ashen Light of Venus : investigating a 400-year-old phenomenon / John C. Barentine.
Barentine, John C.
2021
QB621
Available Online

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Title
Mystery of the Ashen Light of Venus : investigating a 400-year-old phenomenon / John C. Barentine.
Author
Barentine, John C.
ISBN
9783030727154 (electronic bk.)
3030727157 (electronic bk.)
3030727149
9783030727147
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72715-4
Publication Details
Cham, Switzerland : Springer, 2021.
Language
English
Description
1 online resource
Item Number
10.1007/978-3-030-72715-4 doi
Call Number
QB621
Dewey Decimal Classification
523.422
Summary
The Ashen Light of Venus -- a ghostly emission of light from the night side of our nearest planetary neighboris among the last unsolved mysteries of astronomical history. In the four centuries since the phenomenon was first reported, highly reputable visual observers of Venus have recorded seeing the Ashen Light, while others have spent a lifetime searching for it without once being convinced that they ever saw it. Is the Ashen Light a trick of the eye? The result of a defective lens? A real scientific event? Occasional references to the Ashen Light are scattered across the literature, yet no work to date has synthesized these records. This book therefore digs deep into the history of the mystery and our latest attempts to understand it, sifting through the clues that might explain whether it is caused by physics, is conjured up by the eye or brain, or a combination of both. This baffling story will appeal to amateur astronomers, hobbyists, and lay readers interested in joining the debate about one of the most elusive observable phenomena ever recorded in the night sky.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed September 22, 2021).
Series
Astronomers' universe.
Available in Other Form
Print version: 9783030727147
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Intro
Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction
1 Prologue: The Martians That Never Were
2 ``I Could See the Dark Part of Venus ... ''
Venus in Myth and Tradition
Galileo Discovers the Phases of Venus
3 First Light: Early Accounts of the Ashen Light 1643-1800
The Observations of Giovanni Riccioli (1643)
Early Accounts: 1700-1800
William Derham (c. 1700)
Christfried Kirch (1721)
Andreas Mayer (1759)
William Herschel (1793)
Friedrich von Hahn (1793)
4 Going Mainstream: A Scientific Approach c. 1800-1900

Johann Hieronymus Schröter and Karl Ludwig Harding(1806)
Johann Wilhelm Pastorff (1822)
Franz von Paula Gruithuisen (1825)
The Later Nineteenth Century
5 What Is the Light? Historical Explanations of the Ashen Light
Reflected Light
Aurorae
`Extended Twilight'
Surface or Atmospheric Phosphorescence
Thermal Emission
Surface Ice
Scattered Light and Diffraction Effects
6 Venus as a Knowable World: Chasing the Ashen Light into the Space Age 1900-1980
Daylight Observations
The Barbier Campaign (1935)
Nikolai Kozyrev and the Venus Airglow

The International Geophysical Year (1957-1958)
The Early Spacecraft Era
7 New Ideas for an Old Problem: Observations and Science 1980-2020
The Phillips and Russell Campaign (1988)
Lightning in the Venusian Dark
Active Volcanism
Airglow Revived: New Observations of the ``Green Line''
To the Limits of Human Visual Perception
8 Seeing What We Want to See: The Psychology of the Ashen Light
The Discovery of Neptune
The Cautionary Tale of `Vulcan'
9 Perception Revisited: The Psychophysics of the Ashen Light
The Effects of Observer Bias

Down the (Duck- )Rabbit Hole of Vision Science
Accurate and illusory?
10 Epilogue: Evanescence and Evasion
Bibliography
Index

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