Did you know that The Sun contains 99% of the mass in the entire solar system? Or that a day on Saturn is only 10.5 hours long? The universe is a wild and crazy place, and Dean Regas, the outreach astronomer at The Cincinnati Observatory, wants to demystify its inner workings for amateur star gazers. His new book, Facts From Space! (2016, Adams Media), contains hundreds of facts about our solar system and beyond, organized like a handbook for the universe.
You may recognize Regas from the classic PBS television series Star Gazers, which he co-hosts with James Albury of Kika Silva Pla Planetarium in Florida. Regas and Albury took over for beloved longtime host Jack Horkheimer, who passed away in 2010.
What is Regas’s favorite space fact? “I always tell folks that when you see stars at night, a lot of them are not just a single star; many are two stars—or even six or seven—circling each other,” he says.
“We’re in the minority in that we have just one star in our system,” Regas explains. “If you lived on a planet around one of those systems, you’d have six suns.”
Pass the sunscreen, please.
Regas will appear at Books by the Banks on Saturday, Oct 15 from 10 a.m.–4 p.m. He’ll also give a presentation; check program for details.
Book signing: October 27, 7 p.m. Joseph-Beth Booksellers, josephbeth.com