The name of the outstanding American science fiction writer and popularizer Isaac Asimov is well known to the Soviet reader. In this book, the author describes step by step the path of mankind to knowledge of the world around him from a small piece of flat Earth, which once exhausted the world of people, to a giant pulsating Universe. The author introduces the reader into the world of planets and stars, light and dark nebulae, monstrously dense white dwarfs, amazing quasars, scattering galaxies and cosmic rays that fill all known space. Fascinating narration, the ability to talk about the complex problems of physics and astronomy with words understandable to an unprepared reader - all this will undoubtedly attract the attention of readers to A. Azimov's new book.