William Sheehan

In 1946, An Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (FCA) was established, providing the Irish Defence Forces with a volunteer reserve force which numbered over 100,000. The FCA participated in training and military exercises, and was an integral feature of life around Ireland for a great many people. In 2004, the FCA was integrated into the regular army, and renamed as the Reserve Defence Forces (RDF). This book is an illustrated history of the FCA, its members and its work, capturing in images the people and their dedication to what became an important part of the fabric of Irish social history.

This full-length biography of Edward Emerson Barnard, tells the remarkable tale of endurance and achievement of one of the leading astronomers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a 'man who was never known to sleep', Barnard scoured the heavens endlessly, leaving an astonishing legacy of observations – of planets, satellites, comets, double stars, bright and dark nebulae and globular clusters – that make him one of the greatest observers of all time. This book traces Barnard's life from poverty to international recognition. We are told how he grew up fatherless and in hardship during the American Civil War; that he later acquired a small telescope and discovered so many comets that, despite his lack of formal education, he won a position at the Lick Observatory, California. His success as a professional astronomer then unfolds, and we are told, in particular, how he discovered the fifth satellite of Jupiter and pioneered wide-angle photography of comets and the Milky Way.

The intriguing narrative of one of astronomy's strangest searches for a planet that never existed.