Chasing Hubble's Shadows: The Search for Galaxies at the Edge of Time

by Jeff Kanipe

Astronomers are peering farther out in space—and back in time—than ever before Chasing Hubble’s Shadows is an account of the continuing efforts of astronomers to probe the outermost limits of the observable universe. The book derives its title from something the great American astronomer Edwin Hubble once “Eventually, we reach the dim boundary—the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.”
The quest for Hubble’s “shadows”—those unimaginably distant, wispy traces of stars and galaxies that formed within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang—takes us back, in effect, to the beginning of time as we are able to perceive it, when the first discrete stellar objects appeared out of what has lately come to be known as the “cosmic dark age.” The information that is being gleaned from these dim sources—chiefly with the aid of Hubble’s namesake, the Hubble Space Telescope—promises to yield clues to many cosmic puzzles, including the nature of the mysterious “dark energy” that is now believed to pervade all of space.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 24, 2006

Reviews

[Phil Clymer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and provides lots of food for thought. My mind expanded to at least a Red Shift of 1.9
Ya dun good Mr. Kanipe.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The latest in deep space astronomy

When we look out into space we look back in time. When we have the Hubble Space Telescope working for us we look very deep into space and very far back in time, so far back that some of the galaxies that Hubble can see are as they were billions of years ago when the universe was young, when there were few heavy metals, long before the sun came to life, long before (presumably) the birth of our galaxy.

What was the universe like then and what can we learn about the properties of the universe and about its evolution from the dim light given off by those very distant galaxies?

What science journalist Jeff Kanipe is trying to do in this book is bring the general reader up to date on the latest discoveries and understandings in astronomy and how these discoveries are leading to a better understanding of cosmology. Do galaxies look different as we go back in time? Clearly the very first galaxies consisted of stars containing only hydrogen and helium. How were these stars different from the stars we see around us, from our own sun? And what about the shape and characteristics of the first galaxies? Were they spirals, barred or normal, ellipticals or irregulars? And what role does dark energy and dark matter play in their formation?

Kanipe gives up-to-date answers to these questions, and this is one of the strengths of this readable book. Events in astronomy and cosmology move quickly. Books that are even a few years old will be out of date in certain respects. I am always interested in what is, for example, the latest estimate of the age of the universe. Kanipe gives a age of about 14 billion years, which means that light from the most primordial event comes to us from a distance of about 14 billion light years. Actually it is a little less than this since there was a so called "dark age" that lasted until about 13.66 billion years ago at a red shift of (gulp!) 1000. Kanipe typically uses red shift measurements instead of light years to express both distance and time. For example an object 7.3 light years away has a red shift of 0.9. If we look back a mere 70 million years the red shift is a tiny 0.005 (p. 52).

One of the most interesting parts of the book is on Kanipe's visit to Mauna Kea, Hawaii where the two great Keck telescopes are housed. He makes vivid the experience of being with the astronomers at their camp at 9,000 feet and atop the mountain in the cold, still air at nearly 14,000 feet. Kanipe's story integrates knowledge from telescopes around the world, including that from infrared, radio and other telescopes.

One of the things I like best about the book is that there isn't a lot of repetitive history. Instead, the book is devoted to what is happening now in astronomy. The only difficulty is that there is a lot of information to absorb and some of the ideas are unusual. The terminology also requires some effort to get used to, but Kanipe eschews most jargon and uses almost no mathematics.

There are some nice color prints in the middle of the book, an index and a bibliography.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good tour of deep space astronomy for the layperson. Well-written and to the point. I enjoyed the visit to Hawaii with the astronomers 14,000 feet up looking into clear, cold night skies that those of us at light-polluted sea level could only imagine. The big problem with books like this one is that it was written 13 years ago. That is a lifetime in space exploration and the attendant technologies. Yet, an enjoyable, illuminating read.

[Cassandra Kay Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, if anything I think the author could have done a better job and making cohesive statements about where he felt like things were heading. I think the authors goal of trying to shed light on some newer developments as well as go over some of the discoveries in this realm were fairly good. I just would have liked more to know where he feels the frontier of these discoveries about nearby galaxies is taking us. It was just a bit too brief and scattered to get a good feel for the authors standpoint in my opinion. I liked it, some parts were a bit draggy but the content was good and it was overall enjoyable.

[Austin Riba · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't claim to understand everything this book covered. But the parts I could grasp were fascinating. It served as a reminder of the more we know, the less we know.