Our Universe: An Armchair Guide - Hardcover

Rowan-Robinson, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0716721562 ISBN 13: 9780716721567

Publisher: W H Freeman & Co, 1990

Synopsis

Uses twenty famous astronomical objects to survey our current understanding of the universe, and discusses spiral galaxies, comets, quasars, giant radio galaxies, and the Big Bang

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Taking as starting points 20 astronomical subjects, e.g., Halley's comet, Crab Nebula, 3C273 (a quasar), the Magellanic Clouds, British astronomer Rowan-Robinson opens up the universe to the general reader. Discussing ancient beliefs, historical breakthroughs and current cosmological theories, he reiterates the continued centrality of the stars in mankind's understanding of itself. The volume's graphically lively pages feature current telescope images and radio maps next to medieval woodcuts and historical time-lines, with pointed quotes from sources such as Dante, Shakespeare, Whitman and Primo Levi arranged throughout with lavish care. There is nothing soft in the science that Rowan-Robinson summons in order to demonstrate the mysteries of the skies--"The stars and galaxies are like hard stones against our feet"--as he leads readers through the more technological aspects of this study. His passion for his subject, on its human scale and in its vast reaches of time and space, is contagious.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0716721562
• ISBN 13: 9780716721567
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 180