Today, we usually state how many light-years a star or nebula is away from us. But how did we come up with these numbers? The book takes us from the first attempts to determine the distance between the Sun and the Moon, undertaken by ancient astronomers, to the theories of modern giants of this scientific field, such as Edwin Hubble. At its center, however, is the almost forgotten story of a woman who, at the beginning of the 20th century, discovered one of the important laws that make it possible to measure the universe, the story of Henrietta Swan Leavitt.
2007, hardcover, new, last, 168 pages. 978-80-7363-080-5