Story of the Stars PDF Download

Author: Robert A. Heinlein
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429983450
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
The unfinished sci-fi masterpiece by the author of Stranger in a Strange Land—completed by the Hugo Award–winning author of The Stardance Trilogy. Joel Johnston has found the love of his life in Jinny Hamilton. Life would be perfect if only he earned enough money to support a family. But now that Jinny knows his love is true, she reveals an incredible secret: she is really Jinny Conrad, granddaughter of Richard Conrad, the wealthiest man in the solar system. And now that Joel proven his love for Jinny, her family has a plan for him. Joel is to be groomed for a place in the vast Conrad empire and sire a dynasty to carry on the family business. Most men would jump at the opportunity. But to Jinny’s surprise, and even his own, Joel turns down her generous offer and sets off on the mother of all benders. When he wakes up on a colony ship heading into space, he decides it’s time to forget Jinny and make a life among the stars. But his plans—and the plans of billions of others—are shattered by a cosmic cataclysm so devastating it will take all of humanity’s strength and ingenuity just to survive. When an outline for Variable Star was found among Robert A. Heinlein’s papers, Spider Robinson was commissioned to complete the novel. The result is a thrilling new work of science fiction from two of the genre’s greatest minds.

Author: John R. Percy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139463284
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
This book was first published in 2007. Variable stars are those that change brightness. Their variability may be due to geometric processes such as rotation, or eclipse by a companion star, or physical processes such as vibration, flares, or cataclysmic explosions. In each case, variable stars provide unique information about the properties of stars, and the processes that go on within them. This book provides a concise overview of variable stars, including a historical perspective, an introduction to stars in general, the techniques for discovering and studying variable stars, and a description of the main types of variable stars. It ends with short reflections about the connection between the study of variable stars, and research, education, amateur astronomy, and public interest in astronomy. This book is intended for anyone with some background knowledge of astronomy, but is especially suitable for undergraduate students and experienced amateur astronomers who can contribute to our understanding of these important stars.

Author: Leon Campbell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781494052843
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1946 edition.

Author: Dava Sobel
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 069814869X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, the "inspiring" (People), little-known true story of women's landmark contributions to astronomy A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR's Science Friday Nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award "A joy to read.” —The Wall Street Journal In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades—through the generous support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography—enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars; Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use; and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard—and Harvard’s first female department chair. Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.

Author: Horace A. Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521548175
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Complete account of the applications of RR Lyrae stars in professional astronomy.

Author: George Johnson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393348377
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
"A short, excellent account of [Leavitt’s] extraordinary life and achievements." —Simon Singh, New York Times Book Review George Johnson brings to life Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who found the key to the vastness of the universe—in the form of a “yardstick” suitable for measuring it. Unknown in our day, Leavitt was no more recognized in her own: despite her enormous achievement, she was employed by the Harvard Observatory as a mere number-cruncher, at a wage not dissimilar from that of workers in the nearby textile mills. Miss Leavitt’s Stars uncovers her neglected history.

Author: Dorrit Hoffleit
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Author: Stephen Case
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822986116
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Making Stars Physical offers the first extensive look at the astronomical career of John Herschel, son of William Herschel and one of the leading scientific figures in Britain throughout much of the nineteenth century. Herschel’s astronomical career is usually relegated to a continuation of his father, William’s, sweeps for nebulae. However, as Stephen Case argues, John Herschel was pivotal in establishing the sidereal revolution his father had begun: a shift of attention from the planetary system to the study of nebulous regions in the heavens and speculations on the nature of the Milky Way and the sun’s position within it. Through John Herschel’s astronomical career—in particular his work on constellation reform, double stars, and variable stars—the study of stellar objects became part of mainstream astronomy. He leveraged his mathematical expertise and his position within the scientific community to make sidereal astronomy accessible even to casual observers, allowing amateurs to make useful observations that could contribute to theories on the nature of stars. With this book, Case shows how Herschel’s work made the stars physical and laid the foundations for modern astrophysics.

Author: Lisa Harvey-Smith
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1760761583
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In The Secret Life of Stars, award-winning astronomer Lisa Harvey-Smith takes us on a cosmic journey to meet some of the weirdest, most extreme, and enigmatic stars in the universe. We all know the Sun, the powerhouse of our solar system, but what about Luyten’s Flare, the Rosino-Zwicky Object, or Chanal’s variable star? For those whose curiosity takes them far beyond Earth’s atmosphere, The Secret Life of Stars offers a personal and readily understood introduction to some of the Galaxy’s most remarkable stars. Written by award-winning astronomer Lisa Harvey-Smith, each chapter explains various different and unusual stars and their amazing characteristics and attributes, from pulsars, blue stragglers, and white dwarfs, to cannibal stars and explosive supernovae. With beautiful chapter illustrations by Eirian Chapman, this book brings to life the remarkable personalities of these stars, reminding readers what a diverse and unpredictable universe we live in and how fortunate we are to live around a stable star, our Sun.

Author: George Frederick Chambers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Astronomy
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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