Published in 2020
316 pages
Dr. Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington and studies the evolution of dying stars. She has observed for upwards of 50 nights on many of the world’s largest optical telescopes, visited more than a dozen leading observatories, and used the Hubble Space Telescope for her research.
She received her S.B. in physics from MIT and her PhD in astronomy from the University of Hawaii. In 2014 she was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon Prize by the American Astronomical Society. She is a 2017 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Physics and a 2019 Cottrell Scholar.
What is this book about?
The story of the people who see beyond the stars
Humans from the earliest civilizations were spellbound by the night sky-craning their necks each night, they used the stars to orient themselves in the large, strange world around them. Stargazing is a pursuit that continues to fascinate us: from Copernicus to Carl Sagan, astronomers throughout history have spent their lives trying to answer the biggest questions in the universe. Now, award-winning astronomer Emily Levesque shares the stories of modern-day stargazers, the people willing to adventure across high mountaintops and to some of the most remote corners of the planet, all in the name of science.
From the lonely quiet of midnight stargazing to tall tales of wild bears loose in the observatory, The Last Stargazers is a love letter to astronomy and an affirmation of the crucial role that humans can and must play in the future of scientific discovery.
In this sweeping work of narrative science, Levesque shows how astronomers in this scrappy and evolving field are going beyond the machines to infuse creativity and passion into the stars and inspires us all to peer skyward in pursuit of the universe’s secrets.
