The X-Ray Universe / Wallace Tucker, Riccardo Giacconi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tucker, Wallace H., author.

Giacconi, Riccardo, author.

Series:

Harvard Books on Astronomy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

SCIENCE / Physics / Astrophysics.

X-ray astronomy.

Local Subjects:

SCIENCE / Physics / Astrophysics.

X-ray astronomy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (209 p.): Zahlr. Abb.

Edition:

Reprint 2014

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Beyond the range of optical perception--and of ordinary imaginings--a new and violent universe lay undetected until the advent of space exploration. Supernovae, black holes, quasars and pulsars--these were the secrets of the highenergy world revealed when, for the first time, astronomers attached their instruments to rockets and lofted them beyond the earth's x-ray-absorbing atmosphere. The X-Ray Universe is the story of these explorations and the fantastic new science they brought into being. It is a first-hand account: Riccardo Giacconi is one of the principal pioneers of the field, and Wallace Tucker is a theorist who worked closely with him at many critical periods. The book carries the reader from the early days of the Naval Research Laboratory through the era of V-2 rocketry, Sputnik, and the birth of NASA, to the launching of the Einstein X-Ray Observatory. But this is by no means just a history. Behind the suspenseful, sometimes humorous details of human personality grappling with high technology lies a sophisticated exposition of current cosmology and astrophysics, from the rise and fall of the steady-state theory to the search for the missing mass of the universe.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Preface

Contents

1. The X-Ray Universe

2. The Sensible World

3. Precursors

4. Pioneers

5. The Discovery of an X-Ray Star

6. The Riddle of the X-Ray Stars

7. Uhuru: Neutron Stars and Black Holes

8. The X-Ray Sky

9. A Telescope for X-Rays

10. Einstein into Orbit

11. First Light

12. Stellar Coronas and Supernovas

13. Active Galaxies and Quasars

14. Clusters of Galaxies and the Missing Mass

15. The Cosmic X-Ray Background

Coda

Bibliographical Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-59444-4

OCLC:

1013957908