Barnard the star

In the slums of Nashville, in the grip of the Civil War, Edward Emerson Barnard was born and an astronomical success story began. In The immortal Fire Within (Cambridge University Press, £40, ISBN 0 521 44489 6), William Sheehan charts Barnard’s life from a childhood plagued by poverty to the ranks of world-renowned astronomers. He pioneered astronomical photography, and picked up where Galileo left off to discover the fifth moon of Jupiter. Sheehan, an amateur astronomer and professional psychiatrist, meticulously paints in the background to every find. He also takes a compassionate look at the forces in Barnard’s personal life that drove his obsessive mission to carve his name across the heavens. This is a gold mine for anyone with a taste for astronomy’s historical highlights.