Galaxies and the Cosmic Frontier

For the past twelve billion years, galaxies have governed the Universe, bringing form to the firmament, light to the void. Each one a giant system of as many as hundreds of billions of stars, the galaxies are the building blocks of the cosmos, and through new data from modern telescopes--including the Hubble Space Telescope--we are discovering dizzying new facts about how they formed, how they evolve, and what they are made of. This book acquaints readers with these facts and findings--and with what they can tell us about the lives of galaxies over cosmic time, from their emergence shortly after the Hot Big Bang to their ongoing gyrations and transmutations.