This richly illustrated book discusses the ways in which astronomy
expanded after 1945 from a modest discipline to a robust and modern
science. It begins with an introduction to the state of astronomy in
1945 before recounting how in the following years, initial observations
were made in hitherto unexplored ranges of wavelengths, such as
X-radiation, infrared radiation and radio waves. These led to the
serendipitous discovery of more than a dozen new phenomena, including
quasars and neutron stars, that each triggered a new area of research.
The book goes on to discuss how after 1985, the further, systematic
exploration of the earlier discoveries led to long-term planning and the
construction of new, large telescopes on Earth and in Space. Key
scientific highlights described in the text are the detection of
exoplanets (1995), the unexpected discovery of the accelerated expansion
of the Universe (1999), a generally accepted model for the large-scale
properties of the Universe (2003) and the ΛCDM theory (2005) that
explains how the galaxies and stars of the present Universe were formed
from minute irregularities in the (almost) homogenous gas that filled
the early Universe.
All these major scientific achievements came at a price, namely the need
to introduce two new phenomena that are as yet unexplained by physics:
inflation and dark energy. Probably the deepest unsolved question has to
be: Why did all of this start with a Big Bang?
