The Last Stargazers

My first popular science book, The Last Stargazers, shares the tales and experiences of astronomical observing. Weaving together stories from over 100 astronomers and observatory employees, The Last Stargazers introduces readers to how modern observatories are run, shares some of the many incredible stories from the astronomy community about what it’s like to work at a telescope, and reveals the transformative developments in astronomy’s immediate future.

The Last Stargazers is an Amazon Best Book of 2020; a Finalist for the Royal Society Science Book Prize, the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellent in Science Books; and a 2021 Alex Award official nominee.

The Last Stargazers is published by Sourcebooks in the US and Oneworld in the UK. Foreign language editions include Korean (Sigongsa), Japanese (Hara-Shobo), Chinese (Simplified) (Beijing Guangchen), Polish (Copernicus Center Press), and Russian (Azbooka-Atticus).

Check out The Last Stargazers website for book info and updates.

Academic Books

I’ve written two books with IOP as part of their AAS-IOP Astronomy eBook series: an award-winning graduate textbook co-authored with Henny Lamers on stellar interiors and evolution, and a professional text on red supergiants.

Understanding Stellar Evolution (Jan 2018, IOP: Bristol)

Winner of the 2023 AAS Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award, Understanding Stellar Evolution is based on a series of graduate level courses taught at the University of Washington since 2004.  The book is meant for physics and astronomy students and for anyone with a physics background who is interested in stars.  It describes the structure and evolution of stars, with emphasis on the basic physical principles and the interplay between the different processes inside stars such as nuclear reactions, energy transport, chemical mixing, pulsation, mass loss, and rotation. Based on these principles, the evolution of low and high mass stars is explained from their formation to their death.  In addition to homework exercises for each chapter, the text contains a large number of questions that are meant to stimulate the understanding of the physical principles. An extensive set of accompanying lecture slides is available for teachers in both Keynote and PowerPoint formats.

Astrophysics of Red Supergiants (Dec 2017, IOP: Bristol)

Astrophysics of Red Supergiants is the first book of its kind devoted to our current knowledge of red supergiant stars, a key evolutionary phase that is critical to our larger understanding of massive stars.  It provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamental physical properties of red supergiants, their evolution, and their extragalactic and cosmological applications.  It serves as a reference for researchers from a broad range of fields (including stellar astrophysics to supernovae and high-redshift galaxies) who are interested in red supergiants as extreme stages of stellar evolution, dust producers, supernova progenitors, extragalactic metallicity indicators, members of massive binaries and mergers, or simply as compelling objects in their own right.  The book is accessible to a range of experience levels, from graduate students up to senior researchers.