Showing titles in Astronomy & Space Science

**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)** From one of our finest and most popular science writers, and the best-selling author of Your Inner Fish, comes the answer to a scientific mystery as big as the world itself: How are the events that formed our solar system billions of years ago embedded...

The stars and constellations are among the few remaining objects that appear to us just as they appeared to our distant ancestors. From anywhere on Earth, a person may view the celestial panorama simply by stepping outside at night and gazing upward. This nonfiction narrative presents the tales of the 48 classical constellations, compiled from literature spanning a thousand years from Homer to Claudius Ptolemy. These age-old tales have captured the human imagination from ancient times to the present.

The Observing Universe is not a book of answers. It is a book of questions — approached with attention, silence, and wonder. Drawing from cosmology, science, philosophy, and human experience, this contemplative essay invites the listener to reflect on the movement of the universe, the nature of life, consciousness, and the place of the human being within the whole. Throughout this book, the universe is not presented as a distant object to be explained, but as a living process in which we participate.

Astrobiology is an exciting new subject, and one, arguably, more interdisciplinary than any other. Astrobiologists seek to understand the origin and evolution of life on Earth in order to illuminate and guide the search for life on other planets. In this Very Short Introduction, David C. Catling introduces the subject through our understanding of the factors that allowed life to arise and persist on our own planet, and for the signs we are looking for in the search for extraterrestrial life. 

A half-hour dose of cosmic conversation with scientists, educators and students about the cosmos, scientific frontiers, scifi, comics, and more. Hosted by Dr. Charles Liu, PhD, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History. Support us on Patreon.

Space is a place of unparalleled possibility for humanity, and it's undergoing a revolution. A wave of companies led by gutsy entrepreneurs are unlocking opportunities that fire the imagination. No, it's not hotels on Mars or day trips to orbit (yet), but it's an awe-inspiring transformation driven by innovative technologies, creative approaches, hard work, and—for the first time—market forces.

Learn about the incomparable beauty of the Northern Lights with this accessible guide for aspiring astronomers and seasoned night sky observers. Covers the essential equipment needed for observation and photography. Tom Kerss covers the cultural and scientific context for auroras, and offers a...

Long before space travel was possible, the idea of life beyond Earth transfixed humans. In this fascinating book, astronomer Jon Willis explores the science of astrobiology and the possibility of locating other life in our own galaxy. Describing the most recent discoveries by space exploration missions, including the Kepler space telescope, the Mars Curiosity rover, and the New Horizons probe, Willis asks listeners to imagine - and choose among-five scenarios for finding life.

The author of the highly acclaimed Founding Gardeners now gives us an enlightening chronicle of the first truly international scientific endeavor—the eighteenth-century quest to observe the transit of Venus and measure the solar system. On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a...

A retelling of the classic myths and timeless tales by bestselling author Annette Giesecke that underlie the 88 named constellations in the night sky--from Andromeda to Orion to Ursa Major. Classical Mythology of the Constellations is a stargazer's guide to the wondrous stories of the gods...

The next space race has arrived—driven by rival nations, billionaire-funded ventures, and breakthrough technologies all vying to alter the balance of power on Earth and beyond. "This isn’t science fiction; it’s the blueprint for the world we’re about to inherit.” —Ali Velshi, NBC...

Our scientists might be armed with giant telescopes and powerful particle accelerators, yet their goal is the same one that has impelled the human imagination since ancient times: to show us our place in the universe. The result of their collective efforts is a complex story. At times it stretches the imagination just as much as the old creation myths. But its building blocks give us the power to work marvels our predecessors could scarcely comprehend. In Genesis, Guido Tonelli sets out 'to do justice to the great origin story that modern science gives us'.

In The International Space Station: 10 Amazing Facts, author Daran Volcroft takes you on a journey beyond our atmosphere to discover the secrets, science, and stories behind this incredible achievement. From its humble beginnings as a single Russian module launched in 1998 to its current status as the largest human-made object in space, the ISS is a triumph of vision, technology, and cooperation.

What is the nature of the material world? How does it work? What is the universe and how was it formed? What is life? Where do we come from and how did we evolve? How and why do we think? What does it mean to be human? How do we know? There are many different versions of our creation story. This book tells the version according to modern science. It is a unique account, starting at the Big Bang and travelling right up to the emergence of humans as conscious intelligent beings, 13.8 billion years later.

I don’t think many people know that the moon is not actually a perfect sphere; it is in fact shaped slightly like a lemon with bulges on both sides. Or that a day on Mercury lasts longer than a year. These are just a few of the many interesting facts that you will discover about space in this audiobook. If you’re like me, anything space related will fascinate you; there is just something exciting about the big wide world out there beyond Earth, the many unknowns, and the interesting facts that are being discovered on a daily basis.

The Los Angeles Times headline screamed: Rocket Scientist Killed in Pasadena Explosion. The man known as Jack Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform a derided sci-fi plotline into actuality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of the city’s occult scene.

Ragnarok. Armageddon. Doomsday. Since the dawn of time, man has wondered how the world would end. In The Last Three Minutes, Paul Davies reveals the latest theories. Voiced in clear language that makes the cutting-edge science of quarks, neutrinos, wormholes, and metaverses accessible to the layman, The Last Three Minutes treats listeners to a wide range of conjectures about the ultimate fate of the universe.   

Flat Earth has long been denigrated, derided, and disparaged as being the most crackpot of all conspiracy theories, marginalized, mocked, and ridiculed for centuries as being an ignorant ancient unscientific worldview, but the facts of the matter are far from what you have been told. When thoroughly examined and diligently researched with an open-mind, any skeptical critical-thinker will find it is actually the tilting, wobbling, spinning space-ball Earth promoted by NASA and taught in schools that is truly ridiculous and unscientific.

The New York Times bestseller from the author of The Order of Time and Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander “One of the year’s most entrancing books about science.”—The Wall Street Journal “Clear, elegant...a whirlwind tour of some of the biggest ideas in physics...

Brought to you by Penguin. How The Solar System Shaped Human History – And May Help Save Our Planet Our solar system is an extraordinary place where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so...