The Life and Death of Stars

By: Keivan G. Stassun, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Keivan G. Stassun

Long ago, the magnificence of the star-filled sky and its clock-like motions inspired people to invent myths to explain this impressive feature of nature. Now we understand the stars at a much deeper level, not as legendary figures connected with constellations, but as engines of matter, energy, and the raw material of life itself. And thanks to powerful telescopes, our view of the stars is more stunning than ever.

The Life and Death of Stars introduces you to this spectacular story in 24 half-hour lectures that lead you through the essential ideas of astrophysics - the science of stars. Your guide is Professor Stassun, an award-winning teacher and noted astrophysicist. He provides lively, eloquent, and authoritative explanations at a level suitable for science novices as well as for those who already know their way around the starry sky.

The Life and Death of Stars takes you to some otherworldly destinations, including stellar nurseries, planetary nebulae, the core of the sun, and protoplanetary systems. You also become familiar with the periodic table of elements, discovering how fusion reactions inside stars forge successively heavier atoms, producing some in abundance, temporarily skipping others, and creating everything heavier than iron.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 The Great Courses (P)2014 The Teaching Company, LLC

The book for understanding stars !

I am just pleasantly blown away with the content and the narration. I can understand a good amount of discussion between two of my astronomy friends.

Stars

I found this great course in Stars. I know this is Joe how can I help. These college courses help a great deal to get you caught up with current technology.

Just one thing I didn't like

I liked the science but I didn't really like the comparison he made between the life of stars and the human experience, likely because I have a far less positive view of the human condition than he does. And also how it was clearly written from the perspective of someone who wanted kids whereas I very much do not.

Whenever he made the comparison I found myself ruminating on various dark thoughts such as the meanglessness of human life (and how I don't think having kids who will in turn just suffer and die too provides meaning) or how much I despise having a pity fully limited lifespan. Which isn't why I picked up a lecture on stars.

But this is probably just an issue for me, you'll probably like it

Great overview of stellar astronomy

Astronomy is abstract at first and the concepts take time to cure in the mind. As an astrophysics student, it's important to see the information from multiple angles. This is a great way to describe some of the more difficult concepts to get started on, like how the uncertainty principle plays into degeneracy pressure. Great for long drives to a lecture on the subject in this book.

this one is better with video.

instructor frequently refers to pictures or images that he has in the lecture. most of which I had to google as they are not all in the pdf download.

Excellent book.

This is amazing! I learned so much, but the constant comparisons of stellar developments to embryos, wombs, births, siblings, parents was an annoyance.

Stassun keeps referring to visual material

I really like the lecture and have learned a lot (it's not the same old knowledge rehashed like a lot of physics books lately). But one ultra annoying part is, he keeps refering to visual materials, like the horsehead nebulae, which yea I've see pictures of nebulae's before, but never with the intent of looking at indicators that Stassun is refering to, before they were just pretty pictures. It finally reached the "ultra" annoying part when he was showing a computer simulated video of a planet forming, and saying things like "See how it cut's out a tract in the planetary disc" or "Now you can see how Jupiter is just like the Earth." The description of the book says there is a pdf added to my library for the book, which I will find, But I listen in my car so I'll never be able to look at the pdf while driving. just fair warning to anybody wanting to get this book, to check the pdf. Final verdict, absolutely worth the credit

great

best of the Great Courses of you don't have the pictures or videos. was able to follow along really well without them.

cool

it’s amazing how interested this man is in stars. He seems to love them like his own children

Great Content But Never Intended to be an Audiobook

This would be a great visual presentation, but with lots of references to images, figures and simulations which are not in the included PDF, the listener must just imagine what is being shown. Sure the listener could search the internet for similar images, and might even be able to find some of the simulations through the references, but “See image blah blah” or even links to the referenced file (especially in the case of the simulations) would be so much user friendly.