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

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter HUP e-dition: Complete eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Tucker, Wallace,; Giacconi, Riccardo,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2013]; ©1985
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: Reprint 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Harvard Books on Astronomy ; 11
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (201 p.) :; illustrations

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.

Table of 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