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Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe | 
 enlarge | Authors: Robin Kerrod, Carole Stott
Creator: David S. Leckrone
Publisher: Firefly Books
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $22.09
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 171609
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 9.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 1554073162
Dewey Decimal Number: 520.222
EAN: 9781554073160
ASIN: 1554073162
Publication Date: October 12, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
The latest photos from Hubble's recent discoveries, with fascinating new and updated information. After 17 years, 25,000 astronomical targets and more than 700,000 images, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) continues to return images and data that amaze astronomers. Within the past few months alone, the Hubble has revealed a gold mine of just-formed star systems in the newborn Universe, provided detailed views of a second red spot emerging on Jupiter, and confirmed that monster black holes lurk at the center of galaxies. This brand new and updated edition features: - 80 new full-color images
- A new introduction that reveals Hubble's future
- The data behind Pluto's recent demotion to non-planetary status
- Hubble's most important and fascinating new discoveries
- Explanations of how these new discoveries are revising scientific understanding of the Universe.
New photographs reveal astonishing and previously unseen details of what once appeared only as gray blurs or dots on a star map. Examples include the Eagle Nebula and the birth of a star; newly formed stars blowing a cavity in the center of the Small Magellanic Cloud; colliding Antennae galaxies; and a massive galaxy just under assembly. Hubble transports readers beyond our solar system to galaxies millions -- even billions -- of light years away. These dramatic, unforgettable new images bring into sharp focus the ways in which the Universe is unfolding in new and astonishing ways. (200402)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Hubble in the Heavens August 4, 2008
An awe-inspiring trip into the heavens. Inspirational, fantastic, colorful photos of other worlds, galaxies, nebulae, space.... I fall asleep looking at the pictures and have the most amazing dreams.
The new edition corrects problems other reviewers saw December 26, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
First, it's important to know that the most recent, 2007 edition corrects many of the problems some of the other reviewers are talking about. The images are high quality, and the text has been edited and formatted much better than in previous editions.
The 300 or so images that comprise the bulk of the book are stunning. The Hubble Space Telescope is truly a window into the universe, and it more than justifies its reputation as the most important space mission of all time. There are a number of images in the book that are from other space missions, and they're not always differentiated from the HST images in the text. Those non-HST images are excellent, but I think the editing in this regard leaves something to be desired.
While the images are the point of the book, the text is quite good, too. There is an overview of astronomy in general, and each of the chapters is devoted to star formation, galaxies, planets, etc. Kerrod's writing is concise and lucid. The "Glossary of Terms" at the end of the book is much more useful than similar features in other books, and it contains up-to-date terms.
This is a book that's well worth reading. The images are visually stunning, and the text is well done. The new edition corrects most of the problems the other reviewers saw. I'm happy I bought this book, and I'd do it again.
Our first clear view of the Universe February 27, 2006
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
Circling a few hundred miles overhead is one of the engineering marvels of the late twentieth century: humanity's very own mirror on the universe, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Now that we have seen such wonders reflected through its glass, what can we do but venture out into the universe for a closer look?
English astronomer, Robin Kerrod supplies enough explanatory text so that this isn't just another book of beautiful photographs. Among other wonders, we learn about the origins and deaths of stars, cometary knots (which have nothing to do with comets), gaseous stalagmites that have been dubbed 'the pillars of creation,' and protoplanetary disks in the Orion Nebula.
Hubble lets us peer through Titan's atmosphere and into clusters of millions of stars. The planetary nebulae such as the Butterfly and the Spirograph may yield the most beautiful photographs in this book, but it is always the photographs of the vast starfields such as those in the Tarantula Nebula that stop me dead. To think that a few hundred years ago, we were able to count around six thousand stars in the night sky, and now a single photograph yields a million stars in a small pond of gas and dust.
Cosmological theories explode into nonexistence because of these photographs. Others, even stranger are born. The Hubble Deep Field photograph of a small region just north of the Big Dipper (a 120 hour exposure) shows infant galaxies, only a few billion years older than the Universe itself. What will theorists do with this single photograph of a small square of space?
Everyone should own a copy of this book, especially those who are arrogant enough to believe human beings are the center of the Universe. My only problem with some of the double-page photographs is that their most interesting objects are hidden in the book's stitching. This is a very small complaint in the midst of such wonder.
 Poorly Executed March 24, 2004
75 out of 82 found this review helpful
I just received the book and was fairly disappointed by the overall quality. Except for the cover jacket and the first three double-page photos, the majority of the image reproductions are of poor quality. First, many of the photos look like they were scanned from prints rather than digitally reproduced directly from the original data and show defects like scratches. The photos suffer from a poor selection of dithering pattern used to reproduce the many colors. This gives the overall impression of a grainy photo. Quite a few of the images are displayed at too large a size and have excessive pixellation. A few pages of text were marred with stains or bleed through from the printing process. Finally, about half of the images at the end of the book dealing with the planets are not from Hubble at all. Having seen most of the images in this book in either their native FITS or tif formats I do know what the quality of these should be - and this book ain't it!
 The Best Images of the Universe at your Fingertips!!! January 12, 2004
29 out of 30 found this review helpful
+++++
The author, Robin Kerrod, an astronomer and accomplished astronomy writer, states in this book's preface the following:
"This book reveals the wonderful, mysterious, and awesome universe of ours...You don't have to be an astronomer to appreciate the...breathtakingly, hauntingly beautiful [colour] images [or pictures], which chronicle frozen moments in the life of the cosmos [or universe]--from the Martian dust storms to...planetary systems [other than our own]; from the birth pangs of young stars to the death throes of ancient ones; from [a very high rate of star formation] in neighbouring galaxies to catastrophic collisions in remote [galaxies]."
Thus, it is the visually stunning and dramatic images that grace all of the 190 pages of this book (published in October 2003) that make it so remarkable. I counted approximately 300 images. Note that of these, about 25 are non-space pictures. My favourite non-space picture is a cutaway diagram of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) that shows its essential features. Each image or picture is accompanied by an excellent description of what's going on in the picture.
This book's title implies that all the space images have come from the HST (named after the foremost U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble, 1889-1953). Actually, as the picture credits section reveals, the majority of this book's space images do come from the HST but a small minority of them come from other sources such as Earth-based observatories, artificial satellites (for example, the COsmic Background Explorer or COBE), and space probes (such as Voyager 2).
This book is divided into six chapters that deal respectively with star birth, star death, galaxies, the expanding universe, solar systems, and our solar system's planets. The appropriate pictures are put into each chapter. For example, the first chapter on star birth contains about 35 pictures that deal with star birth.
This is not only a picture book! This book also gives an overview of astronomy. That is, each chapter is accompanied by text that is concise, comprehensive, and well-written. I learned much from the combination of Kerrod's lucid text and the magnificant pictures.
This book also has a seventh section that is divided into two parts. The first part explains details about telescopes in general while the second part discusses details about the HST in particular. Both parts include informative pictures.
What significant space event occurred in 1957? When was the HST put into orbit? The answers to these and other similar questions can be found in the section called "Landmarks in Astronomy." This section lists major astronomical landmarks that occurred between 585 BC and 2010 AD.
Need to find the definition of an astronomical/space/telescope term in a hurry? Then use this book's "Glossary of Terms." Such recent terms as "COSTAR", "proplyd", and "WIMP" are given excellent, concise definitions.
There are two obvious problems I found with this book. First, the text on page 162 is duplicated on page 168. Second, there are no references/notes for the book's text. Some of this text information is very recent and very factual. Thus, it seems to me that this information should be properly referenced. All of the pictures, however, do give credit to their sources.
In conclusion, if you want to learn about the universe and see its glorious wonders, then don't go out and buy an expensive telescope or pay the very large amount to be a tourist on the next Space Shuttle flight. Instead, get this relatively inexpensive book and have the universe at your fingertips!!!
+++++
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