Orienting us with an insider's tour of our cosmic home,the Milky Way,William Waller and Paul Hodge then take us on a spectacular journey,inviting us to probe the exquisite structures and dynamics of the giant spiral and elliptical galaxies,to witness colliding and erupting galaxies,and to pay our respects to the most powerful galaxies of all-the quasars. A basic guide to the latest news from the cosmic frontier-about the black holes in the centers of galaxies,about the way in which some galaxies cannibalize each other,about the vast distances between galaxies,and about the remarkable new evidence regarding dark energy and the cosmic expansion-this book gives us a firm foundation for exploring the more speculative fringes of our current understanding.This is a heavily revised and completely updated version of Hodge's Galaxies,which won an Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Best Science Book of the Year in 1986.
Publisher: Harvard University PressISBN: 9780674010796Weight: 921 gDimensions: 248 x 162 mm
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Waller,a professor of astronomy,teams with Hodge,editor-in-chief of Astronomical Journal,to present recent advances due largely to the advent of massive earthbound and spaceborne telescopes. In fact,these instruments now allow astronomers to detect'galaxies so distant that we are seeing them shortly after their emergence from the din of the Big Bang,'the authors write.Some galaxies erupt in starbursts; most contain giant black holes at their cores,each containing several million or billion times as much mass as our sun. William Waller and Paul Hodge give us a magisterial tour of these galaxies and their environment in space.
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