The Magic of Galaxies and Stars

This book is ideal for those who wish to start learning about the intriguing modern concepts of astrophysics: the birth and evolution of the universe, its large-scale structure, galaxies and their clusters, and stars. The book provides just enough text to give a feeling of what it is all about, such as the non-Euclidean geometty of the universe, while the main point is to cover all the recent major discoveries and novel hypotheses and theories in astrophysics, from quasars and relict radiation to black holes and the neutrino rest mass, the latter having a profound impact on the entire philosophy of the universe. The Russian edition of this book ran into 100,000 copies and is sold out.