The information presented includes: definitions, names, historical background, coordinates, classifications, physical descriptions, maps, charts, sketches, and observing guides. All told in an engaging manner.The series became an instant success with amateur astronomers, and remained so for decades. While it is now dated, it is still a popular source of information.Volume One lists the constellations from Andromeda to Cetus.

    Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: the far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava-plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail.How could this be, and what might it tell us about our own place in the universe? As it turns out, quite a lot.Fourteen billion years ago, the universe exploded into being, creating galaxies and stars. Planets formed out of the leftover dust and gas that coalesced into larger and larger bodies orbiting around each star. In a sort of heavenly survival of the fittest, planetary bodies smashed into each other until solar systems emerged. Curiously, instead of being relatively similar in terms of composition, the planets in our solar system, and the comets, asteroids, satellites and rings, are bewitchingly distinct. So, too, the halves of our moon.In When the Earth Had Two Moons, esteemed planetary geologist Erik Asphaug takes us on an exhilarating tour through the farthest reaches of time and our galaxy to find out why. Beautifully written and provocatively argued, When the Earth Had Two Moons is not only a mind-blowing astronomical tour but a profound inquiry into the nature of life here—and billions of miles from home.

    Whimsical color illustrations on every page and handy definitions and sidebars help engage younger readers and develop their interest. The special star wheel helps locate stars and planets from any location at any time of year. This is the third in Black Dog & Leventhal's successful series including The Story of the Orchestra and A Child's Introduction to Poetry.

    They will meet the world's first astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists and explore the lives and ideas of such famous people as Pythagoras, Archimedes, Brahmagupta, al-Khwarizmi, Fibonacci, Ptolemy, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Hakim will introduce them to Aristotle—one of the greatest philosophers of all time—whose scientific ideas dominated much of the world for eighteen centuries.In the three-book The Story of Science series, master storyteller Joy Hakim narrates the evolution of scientific thought from ancient times to the present. With lively, character-driven narrative, Hakim spotlights the achievements of some of the world's greatest scientists and encourages a similiar spirit of inquiry in readers. The books include hundreds of color photographs, charts, maps, and diagrams; informative sidebars; suggestions for further reading; and excerpts from the writings of great scientists.

    Today there are three cats for every dog on the planet, and yet cats remain more mysterious, even to their most adoring owners. Unlike dogs, cats evolved as solitary hunters, and, while many have learned to live alongside humans and even feel affection for us, they still don’t quite get us” the way dogs do, and perhaps they never will. But cats have rich emotional lives that we need to respect and understand if they are to thrive in our company.In Cat Sense, renowned anthrozoologist John Bradshaw takes us further into the mind of the domestic cat than ever before, using cutting-edge scientific research to dispel the myths and explain the true nature of our feline friends. Tracing the cat’s evolution from lone predator to domesticated companion, Bradshaw shows that although cats and humans have been living together for at least eight thousand years, cats remain independent, predatory, and wary of contact with their own kind, qualities that often clash with our modern lifestyles. Cats still have three out of four paws firmly planted in the wild, and within only a few generations can easily revert back to the independent way of life that was the exclusive preserve of their predecessors some 10,000 years ago. Cats are astonishingly flexible, and given the right environment they can adapt to a life of domesticity with their owners—but to continue do so, they will increasingly need our help. If we’re to live in harmony with our cats, Bradshaw explains, we first need to understand their inherited quirks: understanding their body language, keeping their environments—however small—sufficiently interesting, and becoming more proactive in managing both their natural hunting instincts and their relationships with other cats.A must-read for any cat lover, Cat Sense offers humane, penetrating insights about the domestic cat that challenge our most basic assumptions and promise to dramatically improve our pets’ lives—and ours.

    A number of the key figures in the new edition are revised to provide a more inviting and informative treatment. The figures are broken into component parts with supporting commentary so that they can more readily see the key ideas. Material from The Flying Circus is incorporated into the chapter opener puzzlers, sample problems, examples and end-of-chapter problems to make the subject more engaging. Checkpoints enable them to check their understanding of a question with some reasoning based on the narrative or sample problem they just read. Sample Problems also demonstrate how engineers can solve problems with reasoned solutions.

    Lewis Dartnell considers some of the fascinating questions facing researchers today. Could life exist anywhere else in the universe? What might aliens really look like? Dartnell explains why Earth is uniquely suited for life and reveals our profound connection to the cosmos.

    Told through an examination of animal and plant life today - with occasional juxtapositions of extinct fossil forms to reveal the origin of living creatures - "Life on Earth" is an astonishing pageant of life, with a cast of characters drawn from the whole range of living animals the world over. Attenborough's perceptive, dynamic approach to the evolution of some four million species of living organisms that populate the planet is to trace the most significant thread in the history of each major group. He then proceeds to explain from the evidence of living representatives and fossil remains why certain animals adapted and survived, evolved to more complex and "higher" forms of life, while others, by some inherent limitation imposed by their physiology or structure, failed and became extinct. "Life on Earth" is a book of wonders. A model of clarity and ease as a guide, Attenborough takes the reader around the world with him into jungles where orchids have petals that "impersonate" wasps to attract pollinating insects; to Australia, where honeypot ants force feed nectar to workers of a special caste, then hang them up by their forelegs like living storage jars; to remote mountains in Japan where little monkeys called macaques have learned to combat the winter snows by bathing in hot volcanic springs.

    With the Big Bang, it went from a state of unimaginable density to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball to a simmering fluid of matter and energy, laying down the seeds for everything from dark matter to black holes to one rocky planet orbiting a star near the edge of a spiral galaxy that happened to develop life. But what happens at the end of the story? In billions of years, humanity could still exist in some unrecognizable form, venturing out to distant space, finding new homes and building new civilizations. But the death of the universe is final. What might such a cataclysm look like? And what does it mean for us? Dr. Katie Mack has been contemplating these questions since she was eighteen, when her astronomy professor first informed her the universe could end at any moment, setting her on the path toward theoretical astrophysics. Now, with lively wit and humor, she unpacks them in The End of Everything, taking us on a mind-bending tour through each of the cosmos’ possible finales: the Big Crunch; the Heat Death; Vacuum Decay; the Big Rip; and the Bounce. In the tradition of Neil DeGrasse’s bestseller Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Mack guides us through major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory, and much more, in a wildly fun, surprisingly upbeat ride to the farthest reaches of everything we know.

    All three astronauts were experienced pilots and had dreams of one day walking on the moon, but little did they know, nor did anyone else, that once they entered the spacecraft that cold winter day they would never leave it alive. The Apollo program would be perilously close to failure before it ever got off the ground. But rather than dooming the space program, this tragedy caused the spacecraft to be completely overhauled, creating a stellar flying machine to achieve the program’s primary goal: putting man on the moon. Apollo 1 is a candid portrayal of the astronauts, the disaster that killed them, and its aftermath. In it, readers will learn: How the Apollo 1 spacecraft was doomed from the start, with miles of uninsulated wiring and tons of flammable materials in a pure oxygen atmosphere, along with a hatch that wouldn’t open How, due to political pressure, the government contract to build the Apollo 1 craft went to a bidder with an inferior plan How public opinion polls were beginning to turn against the space control before the tragedy and got much worse after Apollo 1 is about America fulfilling its destiny of man setting foot on the moon. It’s also about the three American heroes who lost their lives in the tragedy, but whose lives were not lost in vain.

    Atoms, ice crystals, grains of pollen, snowflakes, butterfly wings, cloud formations, searing comets, and showers of stars are born, live and die. The unprecedented scope of Heaven & Earth offers an awe-inspiring voyage of discovery through this infinite world that is science - from the smallest particles on the earth's surface to tiny dots in galaxies that are billions of light years away.Revealing the extensive range of matter contained in the cosmos, this book navigates a fascinating trajectory through an unexplored world, to celebrate the immeasurable beauty and countless mysteries of planet earth and the universe. It charts - chapter by chapter - intricate landscapes of increasing scale and distance, captured by microscope, x-ray, satellite and telescope. Each magnificent photograph is accompanied by an extended caption that explains it in detail, offering a dose of scientific information that enables us to associate with it on a human scale.This volume presents a unique and richly illustrated insight into the momentous relation between aesthetics and nature, in the light of nature's magnitude and its complexity of life. The result is the ultimate fusion of art and science, through a sequence of images that are as subtle as they are stupendous.

    Yet, while common, oak woodlands are anything but ordinary. In a book rich in illustration and suffused with wonder, author Kate Marianchild combines extensive research and years of personal experience to explore some of the marvelous plants and animals that the oak woodlands nurture. Acorn woodpeckers unite in marriages of up to ten mates and raise their young cooperatively. Ground squirrels roll in rattlesnake skins to hide their scent from hungry snakes. Manzanita's rust-colored, paper-thin bark peels away in time for the summer solstice, exposing sinuous contours that are cool to the touch even on the hottest day. Conveying up-to-the-minute scientific findings with a storyteller's skill, Marianchild introduces us to a host of remarkable creatures in a world close by, a world that rustles, hums, and sings with the sounds of wild things.

    Each cluster of stars is featured alongside the "story" (mythological or historical) behind its naming, tips on how to find it, what times of year it is visible, and key stars and asterisms within its grouping. Complete with star maps and a glossary, this keepsake volume of visual reference and beauty is perfect for inquisitive young stargazers. Colors are brighter than they appear - printed in pure Pantones. Book jacket features foil stamping and laser-cut pinholes.Ages 7-10

    Kelly's photos prove that this perspective--from 250 miles above Earth-- while hard-won, is also almost unspeakably beautiful. A gift for photography helped make Kelly a social media sensation, and here his photos are collected alongside his own commentary, which set the images in their proper contexts, human and cosmic.Kelly captures sunsets, moonrises, the aurora borealis, and the luminous, hazy tapestry of the Milky Way. He presents snapshots of life and work on the International Space Station, from spacewalks to selfies. But above all--or floating amidst all--he takes the earth itself as his celestial muse. Here are hurricanes, wrinkled mountains, New York City shining like a galaxy--glorious photographs that are, in themselves, a passionate argument for the preservation of our planet in the face of climate change and environmental destruction.

    From wild baboons to gooey slime molds, most every living organism instinctually knows how to balance their diets, except modern-day humans. When and why did we lose this ability, and how can we get it back? David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson reveal the answers to these questions in a gripping tale of evolutionary biology and nutritional science, based upon years of groundbreaking research. Their colorful scientific journey takes readers across the globe, from the foothills of Cape Town, to the deserts of Arizona, to a state-of-the-art research center in Sydney. Readers will encounter locusts, mice and even gorillas along the way as the scientists test their hypotheses on various members of the animal kingdom. This epic scientific adventure culminates in a unifying theory of nutrition that has profound implications for our current epidemic of metabolic diseases and obesity. Raubenheimer and Simpson ultimately offer useful advice to understand the unwanted side effects of fad diets, gain control over one’s food environment, and see that delicious and healthy are integral parts of proper eating.