GALAXIES

A captivating look at galaxies--their varied shapes, sizes, types, locations, formations, and dissolutions. Majestic full-color photos--including time exposures that capture light invisible to human eyes, computer-colored photos, and a photo from an orbiting infrared telescope--combine with lucid text to give the reader an awareness of the complex, awesome, endless universe of which we are a part. No one equals Simon at providing simple, concrete examples of nearly incomprehensible concepts. ""Even though the stars look close together, the galaxy is mostly empty space. If a dozen tennis balls were spread out across the United States, they would be more crowded than most of the stars in the galaxy."" He notes that there are more than 300 billion stars in the Andromeda galaxy, and adds: ""If you were to count one star per second nonstop, it would take you more than nine thousand years to count the stars in this galaxy."" An outstanding science title, by an author who has written many.