Publisher's Synopsis
Space: our final frontier tells the story of the exploration of deep space which has largely taken place in the final decades of the 20th century. Space probes have now visited all of the major planets of our Solar System - the only worlds that are likely to be physically explored in our lifetime. However, beyond the Solar System, across the final frontier of space, astronomers are now able to explore the Universe by proxy, using evidence from light, radio waves, X-rays, and other information gathered by telescopes on the Earth's surface, and by satellites in orbit around our planet. Astronomers can now work out the life cycles of stars, the evolution of galaxies, the location of other solar systems, and the fate of the Universe itself. Space: our final frontier provides a compelling insight into the way that astronomers work, explaining how they make the discoveries that make headlines, as well as the stories behind those headlines.;From the first steps which measured the distances to the nearest stars, to the latest discovery that the Universe is expanding at an ever faster rate, John Gribbin puts deep space into perspective with the aid of specially commissioned illustrations and stunning photographs from the latest generation of astronomical telescopes.
