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

Interesting and easy to follow

You finish the book with a good understanding of a star’s lifecycle.
Lecturer is clear and lectures are easy to follow.

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.

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