Extragalactic Adventure: Our Strange Universe

by Jean Heidmann, Carl Sagan (Foreword), Maureen Schaeffer (Translator)

The extragalactic universe, the immense world of a billion galaxies lying beyond out own, is the subject of this book. Our Sun is but a tiny star among a hundred billion other in our Galaxy, the Milky Way, which appears as a luminous veil trailing across the clear night sky. Beyond the Milky Way we will soar into space amid galaxies, clusters of galaxies, radio galaxies and quasars of enormous energy, out to the cosmological horizon which arrests our flight like an intangible barrier. Why do galaxies seem to fly from us? Is space so strongly curved that by going straight ahead we come up behind ourselves? Did it all begin with an enormous explosion, the famous Big Bang, which decided our fate in the first quarter of an hour? These are the questions which this rigourous and enthusiastic scientist tries to answer with complete honesty and non-technical clarity.

174 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When there still are phenomenal mysteries circling around in the universe in the eyes of astronomers, how on earth can the layman like me grasp the essence of what goes round? Well, in the ‘case’ of Jean Heidmann telling us the story of the universe, many phenomenae become systematically clear, by his way of describing as well as through many diagrams, models, photographes. He has structured the imagery of many story lines well, thereby absorbing my attention as if I was falling in a black hole (from which I strangely and happily have escaped to tell you, goodreaders, my reader’s experience).
By the way, this book was given to me a present by the highly respected late astronomer Tom Gehrels. JM