25 Remarkable Stars
Twenty-Five of the Galaxy's Most Interesting Stellar Inhabitants

About this book:

From the colossal, "fluffy" hypergiant UY Scuti—large enough to swallow Jupiter’s orbit—to the ancient Methuselah star that predates the universe itself, the night sky is populated by characters stranger and more dramatic than fiction. *25 Remarkable Stars* is your personal tour guide to the galaxy’s most extreme celebrities: pulsars spinning with atomic-clock precision, runaway suns fleeing the Milky Way at impossible speeds, and violent binaries where one star feeds parasitically on its neighbor. Each chapter reads like a cosmic biography, revealing the unique personality, violent history, and inevitable destiny of a stellar icon.

But this collection goes far beyond record-breakers. Journey to the quiet red dwarf TRAPPIST-1, where a family of Earth-sized worlds offers our best hope for alien life, and witness the hellish lava oceans of 55 Cancri e. Stand in the shadow of Betelgeuse as it teeters on the edge of a supernova, and peer into the event horizon of Cygnus X-1, the first black hole ever confirmed. You’ll visit our own familiar Sun with fresh eyes, then travel 5,900 light-years to watch a giant shed its skin in a dusty death spiral, learning how stellar alchemy forged the very atoms in your body.

Written with the wonder of a stargazer and the precision of an astrophysicist, this book translates cutting-edge science into breathtaking narrative. Whether you are tracking the hypervelocity escape of S5-HVS1 or pondering the "impossible" mass of R136a1, you will never look at a pinprick of light the same way again. The universe is vast, but its most fascinating inhabitants are waiting between these covers—pick a star and start exploring.