The Manga Guide to the Universe

07/12/2011 · No Responses

Join Kanna, Kanta, Yamane, and Gloria in The Manga Guide to the Universe as they explore our solar system, the Milky Way, and faraway galaxies in search of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark matter, cosmic expansion, and the Big Bang itself.

As you rocket across the night sky, you’ll become acquainted with modern astronomy and astrophysics, as well as the classical discoveries and theories on which they’re built. You’ll even learn why some scientists believe finding extraterrestrial life is inevitable!

You’ll also learn about:

Discoveries made by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Hubble, and other seminal astronomers
Theories of the universe’s origins, evolution, and geometry
The ways you can measure and observe heavenly bodies with different telescopes, and how astronomers calculate distances in space
Stellar classifications and how the temperature, size, and magnitude of a star are related
Cosmic background radiation, what the WMAP satellite discovered, and scientists’ predictions for the future of the universe

So dust off your flight suit and take a fantastic voyage through the cosmos in The Manga Guide to the Universe.

About the Author
Kenji Ishikawa is a scientific and technical journalist. He was born in Tokyo in 1958. After graduating from the College of Science at the Tokyo University of Science, he worked as a journalist for a weekly magazine and later became a freelance editor and writer. Besides writing novels and various columns, over the last 20 years, he has also written technical commentaries for general readers and conducted many interviews with leading engineers and researchers. His works cover scientific areas such as electricity, mechanics, aviation, astronomy, devices, materials, chemistry, computers, communication, robotics, and energy.

Kiyoshi Kawabata, PhD, ScD, is a professor emeritus in the Department of Physics, College of Science, at the Tokyo University of Science. Born in the Mie prefecture in 1940, Kawabata graduated from the School of Science, Division of Physics and Astronomy, at Kyoto University in 1964. While working on his doctorate, he studied abroad in the United States and received a PhD in astronomy from Penn State University in 1973. He was also awarded a ScD in astrophysics from Kyoto University. In 1981, he worked as a researcher at Columbia University and then worked for approximately eight years at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In 1982, he began teaching as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics, College of Science, at the Tokyo University of Science, and he became a full professor there in 1990. He specializes in astrophysics, particularly observational cosmology and radiative transfer theory.