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Emma Chapman.
First Light: switching on stars at the dawn of time.
Bloomsbury. 2020

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe’s history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging innumerable galaxies, and even to visualising the shadow of a black hole. But when it comes to understanding the origin of the first stars and galaxies, we have been literally in the dark. Incorporating the very latest research from this branch of astrophysics, First Light illuminates this time of darkness, piecing together the evidence to build a picture of the first billion years of our Universe.

This book tells the story of the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionisation: the time when the very first stars burst into life. These bodies were hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times more luminous, lonely blue giants that lived fast and died young in gigantic explosions, seeding the Universe with the heavy elements fundamental to the construction of galaxies, planets and eventually life itself.

Astrophysicist Dr Emma Chapman tells how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers readers a first-hand look at the telescopes currently being developed to take this period in the Universe’s history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.