Starlight Is Falling
By Emily LevesqueAbout the Book
In 1923, Edwin Hubble looked through the 100-inch Hooker telescope and captured our first glimpse of how the universe began. His observations revealed that not only did other galaxies beyond our own Milky Way exist, they were hurtling away from us into nothingness. The expansion rate of the universe became known as H, or the Hubble constant. And the search for its precise value has motivated one of the greatest and longest-running scientific debates of all time. In STARLIGHT IS FALLING, award-winning astronomer Emily Levesque tells the electrifying story of our quest to uncover the Hubble constant, tracing alongside it the rapid evolution of how we pursue and support humanity’s biggest scientific questions. Spanning over a century, STARLIGHT IS FALLING features an unforgettable cast of characters—cowboys, clergymen, an ambidextrous math genius, the famous and forgotten names of astronomy—and cutting-edge telescopes built by titans of industry and national governments around the world. The result is a captivating and turbulent tale about how science is done and what makes it possible—and about our endless quest to truly know the cosmos.
About the Author
Emily Levesque is a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington and the author of The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers, which was an Amazon Best Book of 2020 and a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and the Royal Society Science Book Prize, among other accolades. Her research on massive, strange, and dying stars has been recognized by the AAS with the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in 2020 and the Annie Jump Cannon Award in 2014. Levesque is the chair of the James Webb Space Telescope Users Committee and a science editor for the AAS Journals, as well as a Fulbright scholar, a Guggenheim fellow, a Sloan fellow, a Hubble fellow, and an Einstein fellow. She lives in Seattle, Washington.