A pro-universe history classic read with a twist

The pro-universe history is a book by [English] Giles? Sparrow, Hunan Science and Technology Publishing House published hardcover book, book price: 78.00, page: 416, carefully organized from the network of some of the readers after reading, I hope you can help.

The pro-universe history read (1): where the dream began

How to use a book to describe the universe with 13.8 billion years of history, and so diverse? A pro-universe history? There are also some obscure but low-profile ones that play a crucial role in the development of astronomy, such as the first discovered three-star system Kaiyang, the first discovered father of the variable star η Astronomii, and the first discovered eclipsing binary star Daling V.

These stars have been selected as the most important stars in our solar system, such as the nearest star to the solar system, the first discovered black hole, the first discovered black hole, the first discovered star with a white-dwarf companion, Sirius, and so on.

All of these stars have one characteristic, they are almost always the first discovered or the most representative of the stellar types, and it can be said that they are all the place where the astronomical dream began. From a utilitarian point of view, astronomy may be the most distant discipline from the real life of our ordinary people, but from the beginning of our ancestors look up to the sky, the mysterious universe has never left the human gaze, generations of wise men, generations of advanced technology, before and after running to the distant stars. It is the curiosity for the unknown science and exploration action, decided that mankind can achieve today's achievements.

The pro-universe history of reading (2): a lively and interesting astronomy science class

The main content of this book is to help us understand the history of human exploration of the universe through the introduction of the 21 famous stars and 3 seemingly star non-star celestial bodies. There are 24 chapters in a *** Each chapter is presented in much the same order.

Secondly, it introduces the history of the star in question, how the star was discovered, who discovered it, and then what impact it has had on the entire history of our universe, which is interspersed with stories of many related characters to make the whole book less boring to read. From the first chapter to the twenty-fourth chapter is step by step, if there is a mention of a new moniker the author will also mark in which chapter it will appear, if you see the later chapters and forget the concept of the moniker of the previous chapters the author will also mark so that you can find the corresponding position faster.

Finally, there are explanations such as the first picture, and the second picture shows some additional knowledge.

These are the components of each chapter, and the overall readability of the book is easy to understand, and the author's humorous way of expression makes you feel like listening to a popular astronomy class, and does not make you feel boring the more you read, the more interested you become. This book for the first time to understand the history of the universe is not a high threshold, there are many basic knowledge in high school have come into contact with, like me, such as college liberal arts majors can also read very understandable. For those who have already learned about it, it will help you gain more knowledge about the history of the universe. I even had to learn how to read the Greek alphabet in order to read the book in its entirety, after all, there are many stars named after "constellations with Greek letters". There are still too many things in the universe that we don't know, and concepts like dark matter and dark energy can't be said to be completely accurate, because maybe a new discovery one day may overturn these concepts, and I hope that future technology will help us understand more and more about the universe, and unravel more unsolved mysteries.

(The book cover is kind of a small egg inside the map of the position of the celestial bodies in the sky involved in this book)

The History of the Universe (3): A Bright View of the Stars

The Brightness of the Stars Since ancient times, human beings have never given up exploring the mysteries of the space and the universe, and when we look up at the starry night sky, various myths and legends of the western and eastern parts of the world may appear in our minds. I am still amazed by the romantic and magnificent imagery embodied in the naming of the constellations by astronomers of the past, Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, Cygnus, Orion, Taurus ...... bright stars in the romantic naming of the stars, as if they have a soul and a contract to play all sorts of wonders in the universe.

All of us are made up of the stardust of the universe, and the stars are inextricably linked to us. In this book, we can see a very detailed knowledge of stargazing. The authors teach us how to recognize the constellations, nebulae, and star clusters in the sky. The illustrations are also very thoughtful, concise and precise, which is a very good aid.

In addition to the stars, which are covered in detail, we also learn about other celestial bodies, such as the Earth, which is "a bit flabby around the waist" - this is the result of the centrifugal tendency of the Earth, which rotates at high speeds, to fling material outward from the equator. The book also contains many other similarly pertinent ideas. There are many other similarly close-to-life analogies in the book that make the principles of celestial evolution easier to understand.

The Shining Spirit of Science If there is one thing that captures my attention more than the bright stars, it is perhaps the scientists on the ground and the great spirit of science that they embody. Professor Pickering invented an ingenious device that allows hundreds of spectra to be captured in a single photo, instead of just one star; he also set up a female research team so that more women could have the opportunity to pursue their careers; and although he could not treat male and female researchers equally, he would not completely erase the scientific contributions made by female researchers. And then there are the amazing numbers: in 1802, Herschel cataloged 500 newly discovered nebulae and star clusters; in 1846, the German astronomer Medler measured 3,000 stars on their own; in 1963, Van der Kamp photographed regularly since 1937, and the results of his research stemmed from more than 2,000 photographic negatives... ... Some of these scientists made astonishingly valuable discoveries, some were convinced to their deaths that they were wrong, but no one can question the remarkable contribution they made to astronomical research.

Personal Quotations Building Before reading A Personal History of the Universe, most of my knowledge of astronomy came from Encyclopedias and high school geography classes; I knew that stars were very important in the universe, but that seemed to be all that was known. The author does a marvelous job of tying together an entire history of the universe with 21 famous stars and 3 objects that appear to be stars but are not, and provides arguments and detailed explanations in the preface that convinced me. I have to admit that this book may not be suitable for non-astronomy majors like me to read in a single sitting, but there is something new to learn with each turn of the page. And in the body of each chapter, I think it's clear that the author has also considered that some readers may skip chapters or prioritize certain content, so the text makes thoughtful notes about this - chapters where XX has been explained, or where this expertise will be expanded upon in detail. This makes me feel as if I am not reading alone, but in front of the author's patient, teacher-like narration, where everything is separate but implicitly related. One of the parts of the book that I really enjoyed, for my own bad taste, was the annotations. Here I was able to enjoy the gossip and the complexity of human nature.

Finally, I'd like to compliment the author on his thoughtfulness, which is evident in all aspects of the book. In addition to the fact that, as mentioned earlier, the author will link up the professional knowledge in the chapters to facilitate the readers' tracking, more importantly, the author has taken care of the reading needs of the general readers and astronomy enthusiasts, and has tried to adopt a more popular and widespread vocabulary, rather than some relatively more difficult and specialized terms. A typical example is "light year", which is a concept more familiar to the general public, but the measurement system commonly used by astronomers is actually "parallax", and the unit of distance adopted in the book is still the light year in order to make it easier to understand and accept.

I think this is a good book for astronomy enthusiasts to read again and again, and for general readers to understand. Even at a time when science and technology are extremely advanced, much of the new knowledge is based on what we already know, because everything in the world conforms to the basic laws of physics and chemistry, and so do the stars.

Although the myriad of stars that exist in the universe are unique, they all go through similar phases in their birth and death cycles, they all shine with the same basic principles, and they can be categorized into different categories, which means that what happens to one star basically happens to billions of other stars. So although "A Personal History of the Universe" tells the entire history of the universe in just 21 stars, it's enough to recognize the laws of evolution of all stars.

Stars are spherical or globular objects composed of hot gas that can shine on their own. Through this book, we can learn that stars are not immobile, but because they are too far away from us and the parallax is too small to be observed with special tools in ancient times, it is difficult to detect their changing positions in the sky, so the name stars has been carried over from that time on. Moreover, some of the stars that appear to be alone are not as "lonely" as we see them, and many of them exist as binaries (e.g., Ursa Major's Kai Yang and Auxiliary Star).

A photo of Ursa Major (quoted from the web)

A History of the Universe is indeed a well-researched book on the history of science, covering the development of astronomy from Galileo's time to the present. The book has a lot of technical terms, but most of them are explained in easy-to-understand terms to ensure that it is readable even by astronomy novices. The author, Giles Sparrow, is clearly not only a theorist but also a practitioner, and in the book he shows us how to find and observe stars that are important to the development of astronomy, and the constellations to which they belong, drawing star charts for reference to find them. Reading this, I believe that everyone will be eager to find their own binoculars, or even telescopes, waiting for nightfall, looking up at the starry sky, according to the map.

Location of objects in the book

Orion Nebula (quoted from the web)

Andromeda Galaxy (quoted from the web)

Many of the astronomical scientists mentioned in the book have made outstanding contributions to our understanding of the stars and the universe, but the authors don't go on at great lengths to extol the virtues of any particular individual. The writings or scientists to whom each discovery is attributed can be found here.

Index of scientists

Index of citations

I gained a lot of new knowledge in this book: why patristic variable stars have a light-variable period, why Type Ia supernovae can be used as standard candles for measuring their distance from the Earth... and so on. Of course, it is impossible to compress all the knowledge about stars and the universe into a 400-page book, and for the content that is not detailed, if it involves a blind spot, you still need to refer to some information, but this does not affect the fact that it is an indispensable book for you to understand the universe.