Abstract
In 1980, thirteen years after the idea for a space experiment to measure the positions of the stars had first been mooted, the international advisory committees of the European Space Agency had assembled and, after lengthy debate, duly acceptedHipparcos as the organisation’s nextmajor science programme. In one ambitious leap, this novel experiment would carry the ancient science of measuring star positionswell and truly to the forefront of the space age.
I don’t pretend to understand the Universe—it’s a great deal bigger
than I am.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
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© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Perryman, M. (2010). Our Place in the Cosmos. In: The Making of History's Greatest Star Map. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11602-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11602-5_2
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