Chandras Cosmos, Wallace H. Tucker
Chandras Cosmos, Wallace H. Tucker
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Chandra's Cosmos
Dark Matter, Black Holes, and Other Wonders Revealed by NASA's Premier X-Ray Observatory

Author: Wallace H. Tucker

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 6 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/28/2017


Synopsis

On July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the most powerful X-ray telescope ever built, was launched aboard the space shuttle Columbia. Since then, Chandra has given us a view of the universe that is largely hidden from telescopes sensitive only to visible light. In Chandra's Cosmos, Wallace H. Tucker uses a series of short, connected stories to describe the telescope's exploration of the hot, high-energy face of the universe. The book is organized in three parts: "The Big," covering the cosmic web, dark energy, dark matter, and massive clusters of galaxies; "The Bad," exploring neutron stars, stellar black holes, and supermassive black holes; and "The Beautiful," discussing stars, exoplanets, and life.

Chandra has imaged the spectacular, glowing remains of exploded stars and taken spectra showing the dispersal of their elements. Chandra has observed the region around the supermassive black hole in the center of our Milky Way and traced the separation of dark matter from normal matter in the collision of galaxies. Tucker explores the implications of these observations in an entertaining, informative narrative aimed at space buffs and general readers alike.

About Wallace H. Tucker

Wallace H. Tucker is the science spokesperson for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-Ray Center. He is the author of numerous papers and seven books, including Revealing the Universe.


Reviews

I savored every moment of this book and took a lot of notes because every page was filled with the most incredible information about black holes (and smaller entities such as quasars, neutron stars, and white and brown dwarfs). Since its launch, Chandra had provided an *incredible* amount of detail......more

Goodreads review by Gary

The more I learn about the world, the more I want to be alive. This is the kind book that keeps me wanting to stay alive in order to learn more. The author did a perfect job in the areas in which he explains: dark matter, super galaxies, black holes, and other such phenomenon. He gave just enough of......more

Goodreads review by Tim

Very accessible popular science book on the contributions made by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, an Earth-orbiting space telescope launched from the Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999. Though the reader learns some about the mission’s technical aspects and about Chandra’s namesake, Nobel-prize......more

Goodreads review by Kadri

It's an informative book about the kinds of objects and cosmic events that can be and have been observed with an X-ray telescope. Since X-rays are emitted in some of the hottest events, then it makes for interesting reading. The images are a large part of the book, and probably the reason this book......more

Goodreads review by Gendou

This is a good book for people curious about how we know what we know in cosmology. Many seminal discoveries were made thanks to the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It opened up a whole new part of the EM spectrum for study by astrophysicists. One could summarize this book as being all about gas. It's act......more