Galaxies in an Accelerating Universe

This book is aimed at the general reader who has an interest in knowing how modern astronomy is moving towards a steadily increasing understanding of galaxies. The author first takes a brief historical look at how the Milky Way was seen until the development of large telescopes, showing how recently we have come to realize that our Galaxy is not the whole Universe but is just one of billions of similar systems. You will learn how we now measure the size of our Galaxy, and what its structure is. We then zoom out to describe our local group of galaxies. The next zoom takes you to nearby galaxy clusters, and we see how galaxies are classified by their shape and structure. We discover the populations of stars which make up the galaxies, and an interesting sidelight shows how local galaxies can help us understand the history of the whole Universe. Zooming out beyond local galaxy clusters the reader will be shown how astronomers map the structure of the Universe as picked out by the large-scale distribution of the galaxies. We are given a view of the evolution of galaxies based on the current standard cosmological model including present doubts and uncertainties. We see how the model can be tested by the observations. In the penultimate chapter we get a view of astronomical techniques and instruments available over the full range of wavelengths showing how the information in the previous chapters is obtained. The journey ends with a look at the exciting instrumental developments which will enhance our knowledge of galaxies throughout the Universe in the coming decade. "What I love about this book is that it gives physical pictures of what’s really happening to galaxies. ... a lot of images and stories. ... So if you want to understand how the Big Bang led to people, you might just want to read this book." John C. Mather, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2006