Summary of Emily Levesque's The Last Stargazers

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I had learned from our email exchanges that I would be studying red supergiants. Red supergiants are massive stars with at least eight times as much mass as our own sun. Because of their large masses, they’ve sped through their stellar lives at breakneck speed, taking just ten million years to transform from their newborn state to their current state.

#2 The most fundamental property of a telescope is its mirror size, and the largest mirrors have been used to make the clearest images of distant objects. The most advanced telescopes are built in the high, dry, remote places of the world.

#3 I was excited to visit a professional observatory. I had a mental image of a big telescope perched on a rock outcropping, but that was about it. I didn’t think about the details of where we would sleep or what we would eat.

#4 I had been enraptured by space since I was a child. In 1986, when Halley’s Comet made its most recent close flyby of the earth, I decided I wanted to be an astronomer. My brother was already into astronomy, and he was patient with me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822544826

IRB Media

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Insights on Emily Levesque's The Last Stargazers

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I had learned from our email exchanges that I would be studying red supergiants. Red supergiants are massive stars with at least eight times as much mass as our own sun. Because of their large masses, they’ve sped through their stellar lives at breakneck speed, taking just ten million years to transform from their newborn state to their current state.

#2

The most fundamental property of a telescope is its mirror size, and the largest mirrors have been used to make the clearest images of distant objects. The most advanced telescopes are built in the high, dry, remote places of the world.

#3

I was excited to visit a professional observatory. I had a mental image of a big telescope perched on a rock outcropping, but that was about it. I didn’t think about the details of where we would sleep or what we would eat.

#4

I had been enraptured by space since I was a child. In 1986, when Halley’s Comet made its most recent close flyby of the earth, I decided I wanted to be an astronomer. My brother was already into astronomy, and he was patient with me.

#5

I was an early and voracious reader, and I was learning about star clusters and black holes and the speed of light thanks to Geoffrey T. Williams’s Planetron books, which chronicle the adventures of a little boy with a toy that transforms into a magical spaceship and explores the heavens.

#6

I was always interested in space, and when I was young, I wanted to be an astronomer. However, my parents didn’t know any professional astronomers, and they didn’t have the money to send me to an expensive college for astronomy.

#7

I was a lonely and frustrated kid, but I had hope thanks to the summer geek camps I was able to attend. I took an astronomy class through the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program in ninth grade, and it blew my mind. I had gone from being the only kid I knew who liked astronomy to being surrounded by an entire class of them.

#8

I was accepted to MIT, and I was ecstatic. My family was supportive trepidation, but behind the scenes they were murmuring about the practicality of my majoring in physics.

#9

The telescopes themselves are on giant mobile mounts,