The program review the characteristics and formation of neutron stars and explains the concept of the Chandrasekhar mass limit. It describes how radio telescopes accidentally discovered pulsars and illustrates how the lighthouse theory describes the observed radiation from a pulsar. The program mentions the postulated gravity waves and how the search to understand black holes may challenge our current laws of physics. The program examines the discovery that our solar system is inside a swirling galaxy we call the Milky Way and learned about its basic features. It describes how the Milky Way formed from a huge spherical cloud that collapsed into a smaller, flatter, faster-spinning disk.
Computer animation shows how density waves can create and maintain a spiral pattern.
The program looks at phenomena near the center of our galaxy and the suggestion that a massive black hole may be at the very center of the Milky Way. This program begins by tracing the story of how astronomer learned that the Milky Way did not comprise the entire universe. The video program examines the three principal galactic shapes, with simulations to illustrate galactic collisions, and star bursts, which influence the structure and evolution of galaxies. Describes the role of gravity in binding clusters into superclusters and superclusters into even larger-scale walls and filaments of galaxies separated by vast voids. Discussed are some of the mysteries presented by quasars, including the large red shifts in their spectra and the fact that their luminosity does not come from starlight.