I highly recommend these books by Alan Hirshfeld [1][2]. The first is about the discovery of parallax, and the instrument that was used to do this in 1838 was built by Fraunhofer. The precision of the instrument required to do this is incredible - the movement of a star due to parallax is, over the course of a year, about a fifth of the angular size of jupiter's great red spot. Unless you've been lucky enough to look through a fairly big telescope, you've probably never seen the great red spot and two centuries ago Bessel (using Franhofer's instrument) was able to detect a change in position of a small fraction of this.

The second book is about the technological developments of ~1850-1920 (cameras, spectroscopes, big telescopes) and is also really interesting. Fraunhofer also makes an appearance here - he was one of the first people to measure the absorption spectrum of the sun. These absorption features are still called Fraunhofer lines [3]. Later Kirchhoff (of the circuit laws) and Bunsen (of the burner) worked out what caused these.

The personal histories of all these people are also really cool, and these books discuss the people as much as the science/tech. It's amazing for how many people a small bit of luck was needed (or in Fraunhofer's case with the house collapsing -> meeting the elector, a big bit of luck)!

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Parallax-Measure-Alan-W-Hirshfeld/dp/... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Starlight-Detectives-Astronomers-Ecce... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines