Extreme Stars: At the Edge of Creation

by James B. Kaler

Book Overview

Over the past 200 years, our knowledge of stars has expanded enormously. From seeing myriad dots of different brightnesses, we haved moved on to measure their distances, temperatures, sizes, chemical... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 052140262X
• ISBN13: 9780521402620
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.9" x 10.1"

Customer Reviews

A Galaxy Full

Have you ever wondered how many different types of stars are in space or are there planets orbiting them? The book Extreme Stars, At the Edge of Creation, by James Kaler is a must read for the astronomy enthusiast. This book is a fresh approach at examining the lives of stars. It covers all extremes from black holes and neutron stars to supergiants and hypergiants. Kaler takes a unique way of organizing the stars in sections for example the coolest, the hottest and the brightest stars. In each section Kaler includes lots of diagrams and pictures to help the reader relate to examples from the text. He is also very through about each topic and often explains the history behind the star and the links that change stars from one type to another. In one chapter, Kaler explains that giant Jupiter class planets have been found in orbit around certain stars. Kaler writes in a way that is very thorough and detailed but where even the most novice astronomer can still understand. The graphs and photos also help to clarify some of the more difficult. For example, when he talks about stars and their spectra he will often include a diagram to help show the relationship.Overall I enjoyed reading this book and I would recommend it to someone interested in astronomy. It is really interesting and shows the great variety of stars that exist in the universe. Especially for people wanting to learn more about stars this book is a must read.

"Stellar behaviour runs amok"

Kaler's descriptive aptly summarises the theme of this fine work. Astronomy done well is always a fascinating read, and Kaler's done a masterful job. He takes us into the realm of the biggest, hottest, smallest, coolest, most dense and diffuse stars in our universe. Each chapter is devoted to a type, with examples, history, evolution and likely finales. The text is clear and unambiguous, obviously written for anyone interested in our stellar neighbours. Diagrams and photographs illuminate complex subjects throughout, including some spectacular colour plates in one section. Kaler deserves high praise for a comprehensive and exhaustive presentation untainted by weighty philosophy or arcane mathematics. Kaler's uses the nearest star, our sun, to launch a comparative view of the more extreme versions of stellar objects. Placed in the middle of the band of stars fitting on the "main sequence", it's a valid starting point. Main sequence stars range from very large and bright to very small and dim. Within that range they follow fairly predictable patterns for a given size and type. Outside that stable range, however, loom some immense exceptions and a plethora of tiny, almost minuscule stellar objects. Orion's shoulder is marked by a star with a diameter nearly reaching the orbit of Jupiter. Another, even greater, reach nearly to Saturn's. Others, as Kaler notes, would "fit inside a small town". Even these minute objects have a life history that tells us much about the universe we inhabit. Kaler is vivid in his descriptions of these objects, but he's even more spirited when dealing with the nuclear processes going on within them. Some stars truly seem to "run amok"!Stars are distant laboratories where reactions occur impossible to duplicate in Earth-bound facilities. Kaler describes the activities of chemical elements within stellar objects and how their signals tell us about the events occurring there. As stars burn away their hydrogen fuel, various options, some still not understood, may be followed. Electrons jump from shell to shell emitting or absorbing energy. These signals, he notes, are the indicators of luminosity, temperature and even distance. One such signal, of course, is the most significant of all - the "noise" indicating the Big Bang that started it all. One result, however, is clear - without these processes neither our planet nor we would exist. This is because the stars, which began as clouds of hydrogen and dust, become the forges of heavier elements. As Joni Mitchell once sang, "we are all made of star stuff". You don't have to be interested in astronomy to enjoy this book. You need only care about your origins and environment. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Good Astronomy Reading

This is the second book by James Kaler I have read. Prior to this I read his book Cosmic Clouds. A very good book, but this one on extreme stars is much better. If you like astronomy you owe it to yourself to read this book. I have never read such a full and comprehensive analysis of stellar evolution prior to this. Many other books treat star types as if they were like worms or dogs - one never evolves into the other. This book clearly ties together the progress of stars form one form to another. I can not recommend this book highly enough!

Taxonomy of Stars

So much of the Universe is unseeable by native human eyesight. Nobody knew of craters on the moon, of Saturn's rings, of the moons orbiting Jupiter, of galaxies or nebulae, of the types of stars..... until the telescope was invented. What fascinates me about this is that it was such a modest telescope that first started revealing these wonders. And once we started to see, we have refined our ways of looking which leads to seeing more, looking harder, seeing more ..... Perhaps if we saw nothing new we would stop looking but that just hasn't happened. In some ways, it seems to me that the rewards for looking are immensely greater than the effort required to see.Our understanding of stars as being huge thermonuclear explosions constrained in space by the force af gravity is so simplistic. (But even that is a very refined view compared to the understanding prior to a knowledge nuclear physics.) In 'Extreme Stars' we are taken for a journey to the limits of what it actually means to be a ball of gas - not necessarily hydrogen - that is ignited to nuclear burning by the force of gravity. We learn of stars that are big, bright (big does not necessarily mean bright), small, young, old, dirty, decreasing in size as they shed gas via a stellar wind, decreasing in size as they expand and shrink - leaving behind a ring of gas.....We also learn of the generation of the elements as they are created in the fires of the nuclear ovens that the range of star types create. We learn of stars that collapse to nothingness in a black hole, that blink out in a final extinguishment of their nuclear reactions, that explode leaving tiny remnants that are truly extreme - neutron stars and pulsars.When I stand outside on a clear night and see the stars gleaming down - distinguished by brightness (which may be due to the star's properties or simply its closeness) and colour only - I marvel at how our understanding of these remote and tantalising objects has developed. This book enormously enhances that sense of the marvellous.

Adds a few dimensions to the night sky

Even though this book is not a "backyard astronomer" type of book, those fortunate enough to have a clear view of the stars at night will enjoy the spectacle even more. Indeed, the author manages to add a three-dimensional sense to the familiar constellation patterns. Let me explain.The title can be a little bit deceptive: "Extreme Stars" doesn't mean "catastrophic stars", but really "the whole family of stars, from one extreme to the other", which is much more interesting anyway. Especially interesting because James Kaler is a professional astronomer and university teacher; and a gifted writer by the way.The book is neatly organized. Each chapter deals with one such extreme: faintest, coolest, hottest, brightest, largest, youngest, oldest, strangest. The first chapter is missing from my enumeration, the one that deals with our Sun, which is our reference star for all the other chapters. So, for each category, the author clearly describes the various star types that fit the description, how they were discovered and understood, the physical origin of such an extreme state, what may come after for the star, etc. But beyond this neat organization, you will discover that stars are really a confusing matter: one star can fit several extremes at the same time, and even get from one extreme to the other during its life... and back. As we travel in (or out of) the main sequence, all types are explained: O, B, A, F, G, K, M, L (and T), DO, AGB, white dwarfs, giants, supergiants, hypergiants, neutron stars, Wolf-Rayet (WN and WC), planetary nebulas, novae, supernovae, black holes, etc. And if you are confused by the plethora of denominations and the apparent lack of unifying scheme in the naming of star types, understand that this is an heritage of a few centuries of equally confused astronomers (still) trying to understand what they were (are) observing.And throughout the book (when possible), the author links an extreme star with one well know light in our night sky: Betelgeuse, Antares, Alpha Centauri, the Orion Nebula, Deneb, etc. Some of the visually brightest stars are bright because they are close to us, some because they are far but extremely active. Some constellations have many bright stars that are really physically close to each other. Some variables or binaries can be easily observed in action, while some other do move against the background in just a few years.All those connexions of theories to the real sky gives a tremendous multi-dimensional perspective to the otherwise "flat" sky. Well done.