Hubble's Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images

by Terence Dickinson

The Hubble Space Telescope. No other telescope combines instant name recognition with the production of consistently spectacular images. Yet few people outside of the astronomy community realize that Hubble is now at the apex of its imaging capabilities. A collection of stunningly detailed pictures, made possible by the new Wide Field Camera 3, has yet to be incorporated into a popular-level book. Until now. Hubble's Universe will be the premier venue for the Hubble Telescope's most recent visual splendors. Bestselling astronomy writer Terence Dickinson showcases extraordinary late-breaking pictures, many of which have yet to receive wide distribution as news stories or in publications outside scientific papers, and presents a breathtaking portfolio drawn from an archive of over 500,000 existing Hubble images. The accompanying text balances accuracy with accessibility, Dickinson's hallmark. And thanks to the author's familiarity with Hubble's history and discoveries and his access to top Hubble scientists for insight and accuracy, the text includes facts and tidbits not found in any other book. Combined with hundreds of brilliant images, the clear, succinct and illuminating narrative brings to life the fascinating forces at work in the universe.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Astronomy, Photography, Space, Reference, Coffee Table Books

300 pages, Hardcover

First published September 6, 2012

About the author

Terence Dickinson is a prolific science writer specializing in astronomy. More than one million copies of his 14 books are in print in five languages. His best-known book, NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe, is widely regarded as the essential guidebook for beginning stargazers. NightWatch, first published in 1983, now has over 600,000 copies in print, making it the top-selling stargazing guide in the world during the past 20 years. Each new edition has outsold the previous one because of extensive revisions and the addition of new material.

Reviews

[Colona Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let's face it, I picked up this book because it is filled with stellar images from the Hubble. Some images take up full pages and there is even a center fold with the Andromeda galaxy! This book also has facts and history about the Hubble and the universe it has taken pictures of. Really a fantastic book, especially to those who are curious about space. I've given this book a 4 star because I skimmed through the text and didn't get to read it completely. ~Ashley

[vonblubba · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for the awe-inspiring pictures, 3 stars for the written content (too vague and with little overall coherence for my taste).

[Serge Pierro · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW..... It's hard to write a review of a book that will leave you speechless. The magnificent photographs that are presented, are nothing short of "mind blowing". You will be stunned at their beauty and their implications on the make up of the universe. Simply incredible!

[Nannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book would make me feel small and insignificant, but . . . it never did. Not once. Surprisingly, this book made me feel content where I am and with my place in this world. Not because it "made me feel a part of something greater", or something cliche like that. Rather . . . it made me me feel like no matter what awful things go down in this world, no matter what crappy decisions I make in this life--no matter what disgusting things happen on Earth, the universe keeps on doing its thing. Yeah, I (and the Earth--and everything that happens on it) am small and insignificant, but that's probably a good thing, considering what we're doing to each other and the planet itself. And despite that, the universe keeps expanding, keeps growing, keeps creating new stars, etc. The scope of the universe is huge, and seeing/realizing this scale is so calming.

The pictures in this massive book are jaw-dropping and gorgeous. I think I stared at each of them for fifteen minutes. There's just so much to see.

Most of the actual science descriptions went over my head, though. I have no background in astronomy, and I picked this up out of sheer curiosity. So as someone not familiar with all these science-y terms, stuff like dark matter and dark energy went through my eyes and out my ears. I read over passages three times and couldn't absorb any of it. I can't complain too much though, because those pictures . . . damn, those pictures.

I wish the book had a sort of conclusion, because after some pictures with captions the book just . . . stopped. And the index began. There wasn't even so much as a concluding paragraph, and it kind of left me feeling disappointed.

But again, those pictures. This book is so worth picking up for those pictures.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a marvelous book to have lying around, for two reasons. One, it weighs a ton, so you need to keep it on a table, not try and lug it about. Reading it in bed is discouraged. Two, the images of Hubble are so truly awe-inspiring that you'll burn out quickly. It's like looking at a splendid mountain vista of autumn leaves on trees. "Gorgeous. Wow. Oh, my...." and before you know it you're looking for an antique shop or homemade pie.

There is minimal text, a bit about the history of Hubble, a bit about what we've learned from using it. The photo captions are rather longer than usual, enough to give you a clear-ish understanding of what you're looking at. Mostly. I comprehend the words that define "light echo" but I still can't quite wrap my mind around the idea.

The point is clearly just to look at all the pretty pictures, taking a moment to be astounded that the "grain" isn't a photographic artifact: those are all stars. Woah. Dude. That's a lot of stars. More than 10 sextillion out there.

(Awe apparently makes me sound like Bill and Ted, which is most egregious.)

Library copy.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a science nerd to begin with but throw in the Hubble and I damn near wet myself! I remember when it was first launched in 1990-I was SO excited and now here are the pictures...in all their awe-inspiring glory. It also expains to you what your looking at and how it works (ie lifecycle of a star, how planets are born, black holes why the Hubble can see colors where nothing else could.) I love space! I will own this book.

[Ananya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE SPACE!!! The perfect book to start off my coffee table book collection shoutout Aashi

[Christopher Angulo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The pictures were excellent. The brief summaries of the science, or how the pictures are created was equally as engaging.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous. These photographs from Hubble are an absolute treasure, those of colorful nebulas and galaxies most of all. Hubble’s missions over the past few decades are the triumph of human curiosity, making us feel very big and very small at the same time.

Two small issues, though: the written text sometimes wasn’t sufficient in explaining some of the less intuitive subjects (for me, gravitational lensing and light echoes), and Dickinson used the phrase “hot, young star” so many times that it started to seem creepy and weird, even if completely unintended!

[Wes Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book with stunning pictures and a very easy to understand breakdown of some rather complex scientific terminology and reasoning. My only knock against the book is that some of the accompanying descriptions of the pictures were very repetitive; the only thing changing in some of them being the distance from earth.

[Isaac Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book Hubble's Universe by Terence Dickens was and is very enjoyable for anyone that it interested in space. It contains hundreds of amazing facts about the universe. I was in awe through the entire book because there were many facts that were unbelievable, and there were also many beautiful pictures of the universe.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

The pictures are outstanding. How could they not be? They capture the near infinite reach of space and time, prompting thoughts about the origin of it all, including whether there is an origin at all. Unfortunately, the text accompanying the pictures was poor in multiple respects. A good bit led with something along the lines of a picture looking “like a hoard of gems fit for an emperor’s collection” or “like a cosmic weapon run amok” - or about gas and dust of various colors in this or that formation. That sort of thing. Or, the text gets technical real fast, including the Hubble cameras, and goes way behind the "pretty picture" language that is used. In other words, there is a sweet spot between fluff and technical that is missed in the text.

There’s no theory in this book that places these photos in context to explain what it is that we are seeing. For example, galaxies are dominant in this picture book, but why are they round, or off-round? Why do they rotate in one direction and not another? What is it about the spiral arms - are they flowing into the galactic center (and illustrate Einstein’s theory of general relativity - the flowing inward to a gravitational center) or are they flowing outward, spitting matter and energy outward via angular momentum? Why do galaxies flatten like a “pancake disk” with a bulge in the center? Is there a connection in galaxy formation between a relatively unconsolidated gas and dust, a barred galaxy, and consolidating spiral galaxies - with the latter being a further pulling inward of the former? In other words, are we seeing in these photos a “natural” galactic sequence? And is the end result of such inward motion a black hole and, if so, why do they not, as a big bang scenario might do, explode from the instabilities that come with singularities? The writer says that a super massive black hole “ejects jets at high speed gas into space,” but doesn't explain why this is so, or how “ejection” works when black holes retain everything, even light.

Where definitive explanations are not possible (likely, mostly), at least then some speculative questions that these photos prompt would have been more valuable to the reader than characterizing what is being shown as pretty pictures that look like something, or the lapsing into technical language that was impossible to follow.

[Gary Detrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Majestic. These images are spellbinding. I hate to take this book back to the library. A lot of information about the formation, types of galaxies, stars and planets. Some of the information is a bit mind-boggling to the average reader on this subject, as myself. I've always found the constellations and our universe fascinating; this reading made it even more fascinating. This is a book you want to own and place on your tabletop. Just viewing the pictures will keep anyone amazed.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The pictures are wonderful but the text talks about ideas without fully explaining them leaving me to stop almost every page and try to work out what they're talking about. It sounds fascinating and I would love to learn more, unfortunately the book doesn't seem interested in explaining exactly what certain astronomy concepts are such as dark energy, universe deceleration rate, redshift, missing mass, and other things.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite chapter of Hubble's universe was the message of starlight. I liked the pictures Hubble's universe. I wish I could remember more of what I read. I am fascinated by astronomy and the universe.

[Ray Savarda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding Pictures! pretty good narration. Covers stars, Nebulas, one chapter on the planets, a selection of all the best photos taken by Hubble, and descriptions of what you're looking at.
Very nice.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful! Fun facts and flawless photos! I had a lot of fun going through this.

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly lovely eye candy for your coffee table but nice explanations of the discoveries made by one of mankind's greatest constructions

[Aaron W. Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flat out beautiful. Found myself staring at some pictures for over a minute completely lost. An amazing collection with minimal (but helpful) text to expand on the pictures. So, so beautiful.

[Hqwxyz · Rating 5 out of 5]

美轮美奂。科学不仅让我们看到这些美景，还让我们理解这些美景是如何产生的，这就是科学的力量。

[Thomas Kroboth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectacular photographs with detailed explanations on the wonders of our universe.

[Norma · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely beautiful

[Christian Nebel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning pictures. Sadly the new telescope outshadows some of the stuff in this book.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just enjoy the photos from the Hubble telescope. Lot of information in this book, much of it beyond my scientific knowledge.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I chose this book because every day, I had been looking at NASA's Hubble Picture of the Day and I wanted to know more about who this telescope was named after, and more about the telescope itself. Because of other books I had read in the past, most of the scientific information in the book I already knew, so what was most interesting to me was the chapter about how the telescope was built and it's capabilities. "If your eye were as sensitive as Hubble's, you could look from New York City and see the glow of a pair of fireflies in Tokyo"(Dickinson 33%). The telescope was an amazing feat of engineering before it became one of astronomy's most powerful tools. It is hard to imagine Hubble was only launched in 1990, before it, we could not know for sure if planets existed outside of our solar system. Even in 1990, when Hubble's old lens was still in place and it produced blurry images, those images were still better than anything a ground-based telescope could do. "Astronomers were somewhat relieved to find that even Hubble's blurry images were sharper than waht could be achieved with ground-based telescopes"(Dickinson 35%). This line conveys the power of the Hubble in the scientific world. Even with a bad lens it still did better than anything ever before. Now that the lens has been corrected with another lens fit on top of it, it can perform better than ever before, as much as ten times sharper than a ground-based telescope. The significance of this book is that it teaches the general public about the tool that is responsible for much of the work of modern astronomy.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing! It combines images from the Hubble space telescope with scientific commentary explaining what is in the picture. Now I know what nebulas are, what a space echo is, and how dark matter can distort images. This is truly a meeting of science and art, or science as art. The descriptions of different space objects are accessible to the lay person, but are smart enough to keep it interesting. It truly is mind-boggling how vast the universe is and how it takes years and years for different cosmic events to reach Earth, and how some objects are just now becoming visible to us. Truly facinating look at the universe.

[Truc-Vien Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes it is not easy to describe as you almost feel that you've ran out of words. The book contains over 300 outstanding cosmic photos, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and selected by the author. With a hardcover version, they are in good detail and great color. It was just amazing reading the story behind each picture and the associated history in the same chapter. Excellent explanation about the Hubble history and astrophotography techniques, which are fundamental in the discovery of galaxies far beyond our Milky Way.

[Carolyn Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing pictures and lots of great information! I leave this book out because everyone who comes to my house likes to flip through it. It's fascinating to me how many stars, planets, and galaxies are out there, and the hubble telescope is only capturing a tiny percent of it all. I look forward to hearing about all the new discoveries we have to make about our universe.

[Robert Kaufman · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say but WOW! Photography by Hubble is like no other!

[Mills College Library]

522.2919 D5537 2012