CH 1: Monks and Astronomers

The book begins with a pilgrimage to the Mount Wilson Observatory, where Edwin Hubble made the astounding discovery that not only is there a universe beyond the Milky Way but that the universe is expanding. We go inside the venerable dome of the 100-inch telescope that made Hubble's work possible. The chapter ends at a hermitage on California's pristine coastline near Big Sur—a place that shows us what Mount Wilson must have been like nearly 100 years ago when the likes of Hubble and Milton Humason scanned the dark skies during moonless nights for the faintest of nebulae.