Stars and Galaxies examines how galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda work and the stars and planets within them. Detailed illustrations and clear charts help explain these complicated topics.

In a mind-bogglingly vast universe, our solar system feels like a comparatively cozy home, perched out on one of the outer arms of the spiral Milky Way galaxy. Formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud, it is comprised of eight terrestrial and gaseous planets, several hundred dwarf planets, nearly five hundred moons, and other small bodies such as asteroid belts, comets, and dust clouds. Chock full of...

Your readers will take a thrilling and mind-boggling voyage of discovery throughout the universe with this information-packed and gorgeously illustrated volume. And when we say "the universe," we mean all of space and time and all that is contained within them, including planets, moons, stars, galaxies, matter, and energy. So this is a grand tour indeed, encompassing the birth of the universe with the Big Bang, hypotheses on its eventual demise, and...

Early humans turned what they could see above them into rich creation myths. Later philosophers created cosmologies that pushed myth closer toward empiricism. The flat disc universe yielded to celestial spheres, and the stationary Earth at the center of it all yielded to a spinning planet in a heliocentric solar system that was one of only untold hundreds of billions of solar systems in hundreds of billions of galaxies. This expansion of the cosmos...

Luminous spheres of plasma held together by their own gravity, each star is born out of the collapse of gaseous nebula and develops a core that radiates astounding amounts of energy, the result of thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, through its interior and across outer space. Ever-expanding, the star throws off mass, which helps form new stars, while the core begins to collapse, becoming a white dwarf, a neutron star, or even a black hole....

Exploring Space examines topics on the space exploration, from the first satellites to modern Martian rovers. Detailed illustrations and clear charts help explain these complicated topics.

Discusses the origin, discovery, special characteristics, and uses of carbon.