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Literary Skies After 1800

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Further Adventures of the Celestial Sleuth

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Abstract

The British Romantic poet Lord Byron, in three stanzas of a poem entitled “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” described an Italian twilight scene with spectacular colors filling the sky. Byron noted that the Moon was visible and that a “Single Star is at her side.” How could we use biographical information, letters, diaries, and other clues to determine that an actual event in 1817 inspired these stanzas? Where in Italy did this occur? On what date did Byron observe this scene? Can we identify the “Single Star” near the Moon? And what is the connection between the remarkable twilight hues observed by Byron in Italy and a volcanic eruption half a world away in Indonesia?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA

    Donald W. Olson

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  1. Donald W. Olson
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Olson, D.W. (2018). Literary Skies After 1800. In: Further Adventures of the Celestial Sleuth. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70320-6_9

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