Product Description
A brief glance at the night sky reveals a remarkable fact about the Universe: it is extremely patchy. The light we see on a moonless night comes from bright specks we call planets and stars. Between the stars we see blackness. Most of astronomy, not to mention geology, biology, and all humanistic studies, is concerned with what happens in and on these bright specks. Yet these lumps and specks, which include the Earth, the Sun, the planets of our solar system, and all the stars together occupy less than one billion billion billionth (10-27) of the total volume of the Universe. It is astonishing to think that the interstellar medium within our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is anything but empty space. But in most of the Galaxy, the density of interstellar matter is thousands of times lower than that of the best vacuum produced on Earth. In fact, there is enough interstellar matter in the Galaxy to make ten billion stars the size of the Sun. In this excellently crafted book, the author gives full treatment to the nature of the stuff between the stars and to the methods that astronomers use to study it. He explains where the matter came from in the first place, how it collects together in clouds and clumps, and the way in which new stars and planets form from material in space. Through his descriptions we see the matter as glorious gas clouds, such as the Orion Nebula, shimmering in rich hues of red and orange. Telescopes reveal inky black clouds, the molecule factories in which new stars and planets are made. Radio, infrared, and ultraviolet telescopes have given astronomers stunning new images of interstellar matter. The Fullness of Space is written for the general reader interested in science. It assumes no scientific or mathematical background, and the only equations in the whole book are found in the appendices. It is beautifully illustrated with many of the finest photographs available of dust clouds and bright nebulae. Readers from high school age to adult will find this an enriching and rewarding book. Gareth Wynn-Williams was educated at Cambridge University and held a teaching position there and a fellowship at the California Institute of Technology before accepting a position as Professor of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. He has written popular articles on astronomy for Scientific American, New Scientist, and Physics Bulletin. |
A Matter of Great Astronomical Importance 
This wonderful book has been written for amateur astronomers (and for more advanced students of astronomy) who would like to learn about the matter that exists in interstellar space. This sounds like a rather dry subject, but think of how many times you have looked at astonishing pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope and wished that you had a better understanding of what you were seeing? Note that the majority of these pictures are not of the planets or stars, but are of regions of interstellar space inside galaxies, both ours and others: in short, they show the incredible material, with strange, interesting shapes and beautiful colors, that exists between the stars. If these pictures arouse your curiosity, then this is your book!In his preface the author, a widely published and respected astronomer, states that "he would like to think that anyone with an interest in the Universe and an appreciation of logical thinking can follow the story laid out...". He would also "hope that the book will be of some use to serious students of physics and astronomy as a broad introduction to the range of interstellar phenomena that are currently accessible to professional astronomers". Both audiences have been well served; in particular those students who like to see the broad picture before they immerse themselves in details will find the book enormously useful. The first three chapters are written for those new to the subject, and are an excellent introduction and preparation for what follows (it is assumed that the reader knows some elementary astronomy). In these chapters the author examines the nature of light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation and describes how they interact with the different particles (electrons, ions, atoms and molecules) that exist in interstellar space. This is particularly important since, as we will learn in the rest of the book, our information about interstellar space comes from the whole spectrum, from gamma rays, through X-rays, visual light, infrared, and radio waves. In the next six chapters the author gracefully describes each of the atoms, ions, molecules, elements other than hydrogen, interstellar dust, and cosmic rays that pervade interstellar space and shows how they interact with electromagnetic waves to produce the data which we measure. It is quite a list, yet the author (who loves his subject and is very much at ease with it) has no problem maintaining our interest. On occasion he briefly mentions a topic, saying that we will learn more about it later. We often peek ahead. A useful feature in each of these chapters is a short description of the various telescopes etc. that are used to obtain information about the particles being described. We learn just enough to satisfy our curiosity and to appreciate how the data is obtained. The next three chapters "pull it all together" by discussing the origin, evolution and fate (it may well disappear in a few billion years, and then you will be sorry that you did not learn about it) of interstellar matter. The final three chapters round out the book by briefly describing interplanetary and intergalactic material. There is virtually no mathematics in the text, however for those who are interested, thirteen appendices give a little algebra on a variety of subjects. Once again, the appendices are beautifully written; you learn just what you need to know. Those who read this wonderfully informative book will learn, in a very painless way, about masers, radio telescopes, cosmic rays, the birth of stars, the galactic magnetic field, bubbles, tunnels, magnetic pressure, frozen flux lines, stellar outflows... the list goes on and on. And, to their great satisfaction, they will now know much more about what the astronomers are saying about those fascinating Hubble pictures (not to mention their X-ray, radio and infrared maps). Not a bad achievement for two hundred pages!
April 20, 2001 | |
