Cosmic Quest - Plumbing the Depths - The Birth of Astrophysics

Heather Couper presents a narrative history of astronomy. The science of astrophysics has emerged over the past 300 years. It began with the first attempts to measure the distances of the stars but took off in late Victorian times with the invention of the spectroscope, a device to split starlight up into its component wavelengths. This led to an understanding of the composition of stars and the discovery of a new element on the Sun.