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This is a book about the mystery and the passion, the imagination, religion, and poetry, the philosophy, the intellectual flights—and, above all, the people—that have created the science of astronomy, from Thales of Miletus predicting eclipses in the sixth century B.C. to today’s scientists probing the cosmic significance of the mysterious “black holes” discovered in 1970. With authority and charm, the distinguished Harvard astronomer Charles A. Whitney here re-creates the lives and temperaments of the great astronomers and retraces the ingenious arguments, the feats of observation and deduction, and the leaps of intuition by which they have gradually unveiled a picture of the universe and have brought us to an understanding of our own planet’s place in it. Among them: KEPLER, searching the solar system for visible evidence of the transcendent order he believed in GALILEO, constructing the first telescope and proposing the concept of universal gravitation NEWTON, paragon of logic, paradoxically driven by an unshakable belief in himself as God’s appointed prophet to create a world of mathematical certainty and thus expose the wonder of his Father in Heaven WILLIAM HERSCHEL, the nineteenth-century German who may well be considered the father of modern astronomy, first man to chart the nebulae EDWIN HUBBLE, in the present century, discovering and exploring galaxies beyond our own Finally, Professor Whitney makes clear for the layman the fascinating problems astronomers wrestle with today: the mysterious nature of quasars, strange cosmic bodies discovered in 1963; the unknown forces behind cataclysmic explosions recently glimpsed in other galaxies; the elusive nature of “interstellar dust”; the eternal question of how it all began.
How does it happen that billions of stars can cooperate to produce the beautiful spirals that characterize so many galaxies, including ours? This book reviews the history behind the discovery of spiral galaxies and the problems faced when trying to explain the existence of spiral structure within them. In the book, subjects such as galaxy morphology and structure are addressed as well as several models for spiral structure. The evidence in favor or against these models is discussed. The book ends by discussing how spiral structure can be used as a proxy for other properties of spiral galaxies, such as their dark matter content and their central supermassive black hole masses, and why this is important.
Today, we accept that we live on a planet circling the sun, that our sun is just one of billions of stars in the galaxy we call the Milky Way, and that our galaxy is but one of billions born out of the big bang. Yet as recently as the early twentieth century, the general public and even astronomers had vague and confused notions about what lay beyo
The story of Pluto and its largest moon, from discovery through the New Horizons flyby--Provided by publisher.
A thought provoking study of the powerful impact of images in guiding astronomers' understanding of galaxies through time.
The large-scale structure of the Universe is dominated by vast voids with galaxies clustered in knots, sheets, and filaments, forming a great 'cosmic web'. In this personal account of the major astronomical developments leading to this discovery, we learn from Laird A. Thompson, a key protagonist, how the first 3D maps of galaxies were created. Using non-mathematical language, he introduces the standard model of cosmology before explaining how and why ideas about cosmic voids evolved, referencing the original maps, reproduced here. His account tells of the competing teams of observers, racing to publish their results, the theorists trying to build or update their models to explain them, and the subsequent large-scale survey efforts that continue to the present day. This is a well-documented account of the birth of a major pillar of modern cosmology, and a useful case study of the trials surrounding how this scientific discovery became accepted.
Earth. The Final Frontier Contrary to popular belief, Earth is not an insignificant blip on the universe’s radar. Our world proves anything but average in Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards’ The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery. But what exactly does Earth bring to the table? How does it prove its worth among numerous planets and constellations in the vastness of the Milky Way? In The Privileged Planet, you’ll learn about the world’s life-sustaining capabilities, water and its miraculous makeup, protection by the planetary giants, and how our planet came into existence in the first place.
An astrophysicist recounts how her team of researchers surfed the cosmos to map our local universe—and discovered the Laniakea supercluster, home of the Milky Way. You are here: on Earth, which is part of the solar system, which is in the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is within the extragalactic supercluster Laniakea. And how can we pinpoint our location so precisely? For 20 years, astrophysicist Hélène Courtois surfed the cosmos with international teams of researchers, working to map our local universe. In this book, Courtois describes this quest and the discovery of our home supercluster. Courtois explains that Laniakea (which means “immense heaven” in Hawaiian) is the largest galaxy structure known to which we belong; it is huge, almost too large to comprehend—about 500 million light-years in diameter. It contains about 100,000 large galaxies like our own, and a million smaller ones. Writing accessibly for nonspecialists, Courtois describes the visualization and analysis that allowed her team to map such large structures of the universe. She highlights the work of individual researchers, including portraits of several exceptional women astrophysicists—presenting another side of astronomy. Key ideas are highlighted in text insets; illustrations accompany the main text. The French edition of this book was named the Best Astronomy Book of 2017 by the astronomy magazine Ciel et espace. For this MIT Press English-language edition, Courtois has added descriptions of discoveries made after Laniakea: the cosmic velocity web and the Dipole and Cold Spot repellers. An engaging account of one of the most important discoveries in astrophysics in recent years, her story is a tribute to teamwork and international collaboration.
A grand tour of our dynamic home galaxy This book offers an intimate guide to the Milky Way, taking readers on a grand tour of our home Galaxy's structure, genesis, and evolution, based on the latest astronomical findings. In engaging language, it tells how the Milky Way congealed from blobs of gas and dark matter into a spinning starry abode brimming with diverse planetary systems—some of which may be hosting myriad life forms and perhaps even other technologically communicative species. William Waller vividly describes the Milky Way as it appears in the night sky, acquainting readers with its key components and telling the history of our changing galactic perceptions. The ancients believed the Milky Way was a home for the gods. Today we know it is but one galaxy among billions of others in the observable universe. Within the Milky Way, ground-based and space-borne telescopes have revealed that our Solar System is not alone. Hundreds of other planetary systems share our tiny part of the vast Galaxy. We reside within a galactic ecosystem that is driven by the theatrics of the most massive stars as they blaze through their brilliant lives and dramatic deaths. Similarly effervescent ecosystems of hot young stars and fluorescing nebulae delineate the graceful spiral arms in our Galaxy's swirling disk. Beyond the disk, the spheroidal halo hosts the ponderous—and still mysterious—dark matter that outweighs everything else. Another dark mystery lurks deep in the heart of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole has produced bizarre phenomena seen at multiple wavelengths. Waller makes the case that our very existence is inextricably linked to the Galaxy that spawned us. Through this book, readers can become well-informed galactic "insiders"—ready to imagine humanity's next steps as fully engaged citizens of the Milky Way.
Tour the incredible scope of the cosmos as we know it with the editor in chief of Astronomy, featuring jaw-dropping illustrations and full-color photography from the magazine’s archives, much of it never before published. “The natural history of the galaxies is majestic and deserves its own David Attenborough. In David Eicher, it may have just found him.”—Richard Dawkins Journey to the edges of our galaxy and beyond with one of the most widely recognized astronomy experts as your guide. Delve into the history of stargazing and space observation, learn how black holes power galaxies, and understand the classification of the different galaxy types. This illuminating book—with artful illustrations and never-before-seen space photography—will open your mind to the wonders of the universe that await.