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Stars Explained: How Do Stars Form, Shine, and Die, a Beginner's Guide to Stellar Astronomy for Adults
Paperback
Series: Astronomy Explained for Adult, Book 1
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN13: 9798190555837
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 3 2026
Pages: 72
Weight: 0.24
Height: 0.15 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 3 2026
Pages: 72
Weight: 0.24
Height: 0.15 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Every atom of carbon in your body was forged inside a red giant star that died before the Sun existed. The iron in your blood was produced in a stellar core in the last second before a supernova explosion. The gold in any ring you wear was made in the merger of two neutron stars. You are the product of billions of years of stellar chemistry. This book explains exactly how that chemistry works.
Stars Explained is a complete, adult-level account of stellar astronomy, written for curious readers who want the real science without the textbook format. You will understand what a star actually is physically, how hydrogen plasma in a gravitational field sustains nuclear fusion for billions of years, and why the Sun is both an extraordinarily ordinary object and the most precisely studied physical system in science. You will follow a star from its birth in a collapsing molecular cloud through its main sequence lifetime, its red giant expansion, and its death as a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, depending on its mass.
Along the way you will meet the scientists who worked all of this out. Cecilia Payne, who in 1925 determined that stars are overwhelmingly hydrogen and helium and was initially told not to publish it. Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who discovered the distance-measuring tool that proved the Milky Way is not the entire universe. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who calculated the maximum mass of a white dwarf on a ship voyage from India to England in 1930. Hans Bethe, who in 1939 finally explained what powers the Sun. And the 2017 gravitational wave detection that watched two neutron stars merge and caught the heavy elements, including gold, being synthesized in real time.
Twelve chapters. The full story of how stars are born, how they burn, how they die, and how everything you are made of was once inside one. Part of the Stars and Galaxies Adult Series.
Along the way you will meet the scientists who worked all of this out. Cecilia Payne, who in 1925 determined that stars are overwhelmingly hydrogen and helium and was initially told not to publish it. Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who discovered the distance-measuring tool that proved the Milky Way is not the entire universe. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who calculated the maximum mass of a white dwarf on a ship voyage from India to England in 1930. Hans Bethe, who in 1939 finally explained what powers the Sun. And the 2017 gravitational wave detection that watched two neutron stars merge and caught the heavy elements, including gold, being synthesized in real time.
Twelve chapters. The full story of how stars are born, how they burn, how they die, and how everything you are made of was once inside one. Part of the Stars and Galaxies Adult Series.
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