A History of the Universe in 100 Stars cover art

A History of the Universe in 100 Stars

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

A History of the Universe in 100 Stars

By: Florian Freistetter, Gesche Ipsen
Narrated by: Richard Burnip
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £18.99

Buy Now for £18.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

From the Big Bang to the Gaia Mission, this is a very personal history of the universe through the author's favourite 100 stars.

Astronomer Florian Freistetter has chosen 100 stars that have almost nothing in common. Some are bright and famous, some shine so feebly you need a huge telescope. There are big stars, small stars, nearby stars and faraway stars. Some died a while ago, others have not even yet come into being. Collectively they tell the story of the whole world, according to Freistetter. There is Algol, for example, the Demon Star, whose strange behaviour has long caused people sleepless nights. And Gamma Draconis, from which we know that the earth rotates around its own axis. There is also the star sequence 61 Cygni, which revealed the size of the cosmos to us.

Then there are certain stars used by astronomers to search for extra-terrestrial life, to explore interstellar space travel, or to explain why the dinosaurs became extinct.

In 100 short, fascinating and entertaining chapters, Freistetter not only reveals the past and future of the cosmos, but also the story of the people who have tried to understand the world in which we live.

©2019 Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München (P)2021 Quercus Editions Limited Astronomy Astronomy & Space Science Cosmology Physics Science Interstellar Black Hole Ancient Greece

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Planets cover art
How to Die in Space cover art
A Brief History of Black Holes cover art
Alien Oceans cover art
The Evidence for Modern Physics cover art
Elemental cover art
The Universe cover art
Galileo's New Universe cover art
Welcome to the Universe cover art
Forces of Nature cover art
The Little Book of Exoplanets cover art
The Cosmic Revolutionary's Handbook cover art
Under Alien Skies cover art
One of Ten Billion Earths cover art
The Search for Exoplanets: What Astronomers Know cover art
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
A must listen for space fans. The approach of looking at it on a star-by-star level is a phenomenal way of exploring the subject.

Fantastic book and great narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is a tremendous tour of the Universe, pitched at my very basic level of understanding and therefore a joy to listen to. I love the way that basic principles of astronomy are repeated and sprinkled throughout the chapters, so that my memory is jogged every time and I'm able to add new layers of information to my freshly-acquired conceptual framework.

Difficult concepts are delivered with lightness and humour and yet there is no trace of a patronising tone. A perfect read!

Stars in their Eyes

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A must listen for any aspiring amateur astronomer. The author presents a fascinating look at the universe from a unique perspective. Going through a 100 stars chapter by chapter all with a story to tell.

A better understanding of the stars

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I loved this book. 100 short stories makes for a fast-paced barrage of wonderful facts and explanations. As soon as I finished I began again as there was so much to absorb. And I am glad I did as it was just as enjoyable the second time.

Cosmic Tour de Force

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
well narrated interesting stories about different stars. great for casual astronomers or the like. wish it didnt end

noice

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A really enjoyable telling of the science of the night through stories about individual stars.

Brilliant!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An enjoyable trek in the era of Webb and Hubble - to be dipped into in any order.

Boldly gone …,,,,,,

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is simply brilliant! Captivating stories with just enough detail (I will admit I have purchased other books to delve deeper into some of the stories). Incredibly well researched and the performance of the narrator was spot on. Big shout out for an excellent translation into English. I only wish my rusty German was still good enough to have understood it in the original German.

Enthralling!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The best audiobook on astronomy.
Over 100 short chapters he covers all the history and current developments in astronomy.
I loved this audiobook!

Utterly superb

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is a great listen. As the title says, it’s divided into a hundred self-contained chapters and each chapter is properly labelled so you can find things again later: ALL audiobook producers should do the same. The translation from the original German is seamless and the reader is absolutely excellent. I could listen to him all day and he’d obviously done his homework because there are none of the pronunciation howlers that mar so many technical books. There’s a fair bit of physics detail but each new definition is described in detail as it comes up, and thereafter the listener is treated as a grown-up and is assumed to have understood what has already been explained. Recommended without reservation.

The best audiobook on astronomy that I own

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews