Visions of the Cosmos

Rating:
Summary: Glorious images of the heavens
Review: This is a great book for anyone interested in astronomy. It's easy to read, it's informative, and it has some incredible and beautiful pictures ... plenty of them! And no math to slow down the readers.

It tells the reader about distances. And about the spectrum, and related temperatures. And all sorts of wonderful things about telescopes. There's a really nice description of our planetary system. We get to learn some fundamental properties of stars, and you are taught about the main sequence and H-R diagrams. We read about star formation: protostars, accretion disks, and Herbig-Haro objects. And about extrasolar planets.

Next we learn about star death. That means looking at planetary nebulae, supernovae, and cataclysmic variable stars. And there's a discussion of Gamma-ray bursters.

Then we look at galaxies. We find out how galaxies are categorized and learn about galactic evolution and mergers and star formation rates. And about active galaxies, quasars, and black holes.

After that, there is a chapter on cosmology. We find out about dark matter and dark energy. And how the expansion of our universe is accelerating.

The final chapter is about future space missions and telescopes. That includes missions to Mars, a comet impact in 2005, and space telescopes that may find some more extrasolar planets. In addition we read about a proposal for a 100-meter ground-based scope, the OWL (OverWhelmingly Large Telescope). As well as the Low-Frequency Array, a set of thousands of antennas that might not be built in the Netherlands, as the array may be larger than that nation.

I think it may be worth getting this book for the pictures alone. It would be a good gift item.