Compact Cosmos

Book excerpt: Exploring the macrocosm from colossal galactic superclusters to quiet backwater planets, Matt Tweed offers a primer on the cosmos for anyone fascinated by the heavens. Taking a guided tour through the universe, we ride past quasars, jets, and galaxies to land on a curious world and examine an array of ideas about space and time. Tweed traces the evolution of stars and formation of planets, describing our "light bubble" and why we can't see any farther than we do. For a concise and accessible description of extra-solar planetary systems, black holes, pulsars, nebulae, great walls, dark matter, red shifts, and much more, The Compact Cosmos is an indispensable guide. Data tables, lists of cosmological constants, and distances from Earth to other bodies in space form a useful appendix.