Cosmic Clouds: Birth, Death and Recycling in the Galaxy ("Scientific American" Library)
Spectacularly illustrated with many recent Hubble Space Telescope photographs, James Kaler's Cosmic Clouds: Birth, Death, And Recycling In The Galaxy takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through the spaces between the stars, to the vast clouds of dust and gas that constitute the interstellar medium. These vast clouds of dust and gas recycle the remains of dead stars to form new stars, continuing a never-ending cosmic process linking together all the objects of the Galaxy, including the planets that arise from the debris of stellar birth. Cosmic Clouds examines the entire path of star birth and stellar recycling, where one generation of stars sends a good portion of itself, including compressive forces and a load of freshly-made chemical elements, back into the stellar nurseries to provide for the next generation. By looking at stellar creation, and ultimately, learning how galaxies work and how they are explored through the science of modern astronomy, Cosmic Clouds offers readers a new and compelling way to view the Universe.  --Midwest Book Review