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100 Billion Suns: The Birth, Life, and Death of the Stars
by Rudolf Kippenhahn, Jean Steinberg (Translator) "The earth revolves around the sun at a rate of 30 kilometers per second in an almost circular orbit measuring 300 million kilometers in diameter..." (more)

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Editorial Reviews

Review
An admirable introduction to the difficult subject of stellar evolution accurately aimed at the general reader.

Product Description:
How are the nuclear power plants we call "stars" formed? Where do they get their energy and how do they die--and what does this suggest about the future of the universe? One of the most popular books written on astrophysics, 100 Billion Suns provides an exhilarating and authoritative life history of the stars.

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Readable and authoritative guide to stellar evolution, February 15, 2001

Reviewer:

Kevin W. Parker (Greenbelt, MD) - See all my reviews

I read a lot of astronomy books, so any one book tends only to reinforce what I know already, plus just a little bit of additional information.

This book was different. I learned a lot about star formation and particularly about the meaning of the ubiquitous Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. The diagram is obligatory in a discussion of any astronomy other than planetary, but it tends to be described rather than explained. Here Kipenhahn goes through the life of stars of various sizes, showing their evolution along the H-R diagram and why the "main sequence" is so thickly populated (simply, because that's when the stars are burning hydrogen, which is what they do most but not all of the time).

Once done with the basics, he goes on to cover binary stars, neutron stars, and other stellar oddities. He also devotes a chapter to planetary formation and the possibility of life on other planets. Three brief but valuable appendices cover the measurement of stellar velocities, distances, and masses.

This book is a treasure and an authoritative work on the topic. Highly recommended.

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