Galaxies

In this wonderful book from the "Very Short Introduction" series, the famous scientist John Gribbin takes us on a journey around the universe, where we see galaxies starting from majestic spiral galaxies — like our Milky Way — and the tattered remnants of massive galactic collisions, and active galaxies that spew streams of radiation into space, to those galaxies that we can barely observe at the farthest edges of space and time. Galaxies are not just magnificent celestial structures in themselves, but studying them has revealed much of what we know about the universe today, giving us a window through which we glimpse the "Big Bang" and the origin of the universe. In this book, Gribbin reviews our galaxy — the Milky Way — in detail, starting from the different types of stars born within it, to the origin of its astonishing spiral structure.