O carte excepţională, o lucrare de referinţă de mari proporţii, cu o arie de cuprindere exhaustivă, care prezintă cosmosul în totalitatea sa. Poate că alte ghiduri vă descriu diferite aspecte ale spaţiului, dar acesta vă arată universul purtându-vă într-o incredibilă şi fascinantă călătorie prin Sistemul nostru Solar şi mult dincolo de el, spre infinitul plin de mistere al cerului înstelat. Universul explică forţele şi procesele care guvernează cosmosul şi înfăţişează planetele şi galaxiile. Veţi vedea naşterea stelelor şi prăbuşirea unor sori muribunzi, înainte de a călători mai departe catre spaţiile nelimitate ale lumii- o odisee de miliarde de ani şi de kilometri care ne poartă deopotrivă înapoi şi înainte în timp. De la quasari la comete, da la planete la supernove, de la roiuri de stele la galaxii şi găuri negre, acesta este ghidul ilustrat complet al măreţiei şi frumuseţii Universului, o carte pentru toată familia, care nu poate lipsi din biblioteca nimănui.
Dorling Kindersley (DK) is a British multinational publishing company specializing in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 62 languages. It is part of Penguin Random House, a consumer publishing company jointly owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and Pearson PLC. Bertelsmann owns 53% of the company and Pearson owns 47%.
Established in 1974, DK publishes a range of titles in genres including travel (including Eyewitness Travel Guides), arts and crafts, business, history, cooking, gaming, gardening, health and fitness, natural history, parenting, science and reference. They also publish books for children, toddlers and babies, covering such topics as history, the human body, animals and activities, as well as licensed properties such as LEGO, Disney and DeLiSo, licensor of the toy Sophie la Girafe. DK has offices in New York, London, Munich, New Delhi, Toronto and Melbourne.
There are so many books available about astronomy, the solar system and beyond. Why is this one worth your time? • It is large format so you can easily see the details of the wonderful illustrations and graphic explanations • It is by one of the best know combinations of knowledgeable people in the world • It was published in 2020 so you are made aware of most recent discoveries
There are all kinds of details about planets (both in our solar system and otherwise), moons, stars and galaxies. For me, I was captivated by what I learned about:
Asteriods – Including that, with smaller asteroids, a big impact can actually shatter it, “but so much energy is used to do this that the resulting fragments cannot escape from the gravitational field, and they will all fall back to form an irregular ball of rubble.”
The Kuiper Belt - An explanation (with excellent illustrations) of its constituent parts.
The Oort Cloud - Of which we know quite little but it contains planetoids such as Sedna, which has a diameter of about 1000 miles. Some believe that it may suggest that there is a yet-to-be-discovered planet influencing Sedna’s orbit!
A thorough delight but better if taken in small bites.
A wonderful book on astronomy with gorgeous photos on space objects & many comprehensive detail maps on constellations. My only complaint of the book is the weight & size. It is over a foot long & it weigh at least five pounds. The oversized book need to be laid down on a flat surface in order to flip the pages. Little children will have a hard time picking up the book.
I'm glad to see this oversize book. But it suffers the DK artistic-design focus ruling over readability. There is a huge amount of great astronomy data in this book. But each page has multiple font sizes, colors, indentations/wrap-arounds, with inserts within inserts. You can't simply READ this book.
The graphics combing information/inserts can be too complex. I think all the DK books feel overly-thought. Too big of a committee trying to get too much information per square-inch.
The latter half of the book covering constellations has a colorful insert box discussing all the Greek mythology considerations. I really hate seeing Astrology in an Astronomy book.
I really need to stop looking at the DK series of books. They tackle many nonfiction topics with a very consistent style that stalls my ability to read them: - Content 4.5/5 - Lots of graphics/pictures 4/5 (but overly complex usually) - Readability 1/5
This book stays in the passenger seat of my car. If I ever get stuck somewhere, or whenever I just have a few minutes to spare, I pick it up and open it to a random page and start reading. I haven't read the whole thing, from front to back, and yet I will give it five stars.
There are so many illustrations and diagrams and inserts and mini-biographies crammed on to each page that this is not a book that you read from left to right. You read around in a circle, and then down in the left corner, and then over on the right somewhere. The words follow the pictures. It is a fun way to read- well that's not quite it, because reading isn't really what's going on here. It is a fun way to get information.
This is a book that I would like to hang on to for many years, which brings me to my biggest complaint. The binding is AWFUL. It started to fall apart almost as soon as I bought it. If there is a better version out there with nice binding I would happily pay twice as much for something that will last a while. But I learned way to much from this book to subtract a star because of the binding. It was tempting...
I've had this fascinating book for years and I love to spend lazy afternoons looking through it. DK books are just the best! Chock-full of information along with stunning visuals! Great series of books!
This. Book. Is. Unbelievably. Incredible. "Universe, A Definitive Visual Guide", which I intentionally spent more than two months finishing, is an encyclopedia about, you guess it, the universe. From the Big Bang, to the Solar System, the Milky Way, Galaxy clusters and deep space, it tirelessly explores the secrets and physical of the cosmos, attaching mini-biographies of important scientists, myth, diagrams, and breathtakingly colorful illustrations, whiping off readers' boredom and showering the enthusiasm. Not only information on space will you be learning from this book, but also physics, chemistry and history related to astronomy itself. Plus, it excites the readers with its detailed charts including constellations and orbits of planets of the night sky for every month of the years. No kidding, I predict this will be staying at least at the top two in my science category booklist although I still have many informative science books awaiting for me. I highly recommend this book to those who want to dive into Universe!
This for me is the thematic sequel to 'Picture Atlas of Our Universe' published by National Geographic in the late 1970s. I'm astounded to think how much we learned in the three or four decades that passed since that first volume which I loved so much as a child.
3 / 5 for 'Universe - The Definitive Visual Guide' by Robert Dinwiddie
Well, this DK guide to the known universe is certainly a book of two halves!
Presentation-wise, this book is excellent, it has to be said - it is filled with stunning photographs and illustrations throughout, as well as informative text under logically progressive sub-headings, illustrated timelines, informative descriptions of stellar events, and lots of little stat / fact / info boxes.
The first half of the book is a solid 5/5, covering in wonderful detail, the universe itself and its theorised creation, then our solar system including all of the planets, moons and belts, the rest of our galaxy including other stars and solar systems, and then finally what may lie further afield. Thoroughly engrossing and beautifully presented.
Conversely, the second half is a solid 1/5. The whole second half is simply is a massive guide to the zodiacal sections of the night sky and where certain constellations are - perhaps it's just me, but this second half was boooooring. What a shameful waste of 220+ pages. Maybe there are people out there who want to read a 220+ page guide to what constellations are where, but I certainly don't. We could have had loads more pages about neutron stars, pulsars, quasars, comets, asteroids, nebulae....but instead, we've got a couple of hundred pages about the constellations and what zodiac sign they correspond to. Honestly, who cares?!
A truly wonderful 1st half, followed by an utterly shite 2nd half. I'm stunned that a book can be so great and so shite at the same time.
This is not a book that you read. It is a book that you experience. The visuals are stunning. With over 500 pages this is a huge coffee table book and an encyclopedia of information about all aspects of the universe. The information is comprehensive beginning with a history of the universe, the composition of the universe and the science of the universe. It continues with specifics like planets and galaxies, constellations, black holes and the list goes on. This is a book to own and pick up when you have a moment and want to read a page or to sit down for a while and learn more about the nature of the universe we live in. I borrowed mine from the library and now I have to own one to really feed my hunger for knowing more and experiencing more of the beauty of the universe.
As you may guess I am just beginning to delve into the content of this book.
This book is really awesome if you want to learn fundamentals about the universe. I guess it is written in simple language understandable for most of laypeople. Many illustrations and graphical explanations provide very useful support.
Pretty good overview of astronomy, with a nice guide to the constellations. However, there is a TON of evolutionary garbage mixed throughout the book, such as a "timeline" of the big bang and early universe.
Es heißt, dass der Mensch mehr über das Weltall als über die Meere weiß. Dieser Umstand wird mit dem Lexikon „Das Universum“ sehr eindrucksvoll unterstrichen. Dieses Buch wirft einen sehr umfassenden Blick auf den aktuellen Wissensstand. Und ich muss gestehen, dass ich bisher noch kein Lexikon über die Weiten des Weltalls gelesen habe, das derart gut aufgemacht ist.
Entweder waren die Bücher, die ich bisher gelesen habe, sehr textlastig und haben einiges an tiefergehendem Verständnis von mir als Leser abverlangt oder aber sie waren optisch sehr eindrucksvoll aufgemacht, gingen aber nicht so sehr in die Tiefe. „Das Universum“ schafft meines Erachtens den Spagat zwischen optisch guter Aufmachung und tiefgreifenden Informationen sehr gut und benötigt dafür auch weit über 500 Seiten.
Das Buch ist in drei große Themen gegliedert: „Das All und seine Erforschung“ bietet grundlegende Informationen zur Astronomie, „Das Weltall“ widmet sich unserem Sonnensystem, unserer Galaxie und wirft einen kurzen Blick darüber hinaus und schließlich zeigt das Kapitel „Der Sternenhimmel“ einen sehr umfassenden Blick auf die Sternbilder (allerdings ohne astrologische Einflüsse).
Zu den Grundlagen der Astronomie gehört nicht nur das Erfassen der unglaublichen Dimensionen, sondern auch die Darstellung des Unerklärlichen. Denn noch immer weiß die Menschheit sehr wenig über die dunkle Materie und den Mechanismus, dass sich das Weltall ausdehnt. Die Erklärungen sind sehr verständlich ausgefallen und gut bebildert. Die Grafiken und Fotografien machen sehr gut deutlich, was z.B. unter der Ausdehnung des Alls verstanden wird und wieso Licht gekrümmt werden kann (um nur zwei Aspekte zu nennen). Solche Betrachtungen machen mich ehrlich gesagt immer wieder sehr demütig. Wie klein die Erde und unser Sonnensystem in Vergleich zum Universum ist.
Der Blick in unser Sonnensystem zeigt sehr eindrucksvoll, wieviel wir schon über die Planeten unseres Sonnensystems wissen. Es ist recht erstaunlich, wie detailliert so mancher Planet mittlerweile erforscht ist. Auf der anderen Seite ist dies vielleicht auch zu erwarten, wenn die Menschheit einen bemannten Flug zum Mars anstrebt.
Es hat mich etwas überrascht, wie umfangreich das letzte Kapitel ausgefallen ist. Das mag daran liegen, dass mir nicht bewusst war, dass es 88 Sternbilder gibt. Wenn ich die detaillierten Auflistungen sehe und mir gezeigt wird, wie ich diese Sternbilder finde, so stehe ich allerdings noch immer auf verlorenem Posten. Wer einen Blick auf einen klaren nicht lichtverschmutzten Himmel hat (der übrigens auch kurz thematisiert wird), der wird sich mit diesen umfangreichen Sternenkarten sicherlich künftig besser orientieren können.
Fazit
„Das Universum“ ist ein sehr umfangreiches Lexikon, das meines Erachtens einen sehr guten Mix aus Fotografien, Grafiken, Illustrationen und Text gefunden hat. Die Informationen sind teils sehr ausführlich und tiefgreifend, ohne den interessierten Laien an keiner Stelle zu überfordern. Wer mehr über das Universum in Erfahrung bringen möchte, liegt mit diesem Lexikon genau richtig.
It was the best of books it was the worst of books. If I were that hack Dickens I would give you a thousand words in the same vain vein. Instead, I will tell normal people to love the first 60 percent of the book that explains and lovingly illustrates our solar system, galaxy, and indeed the universe. Learn, love and admire nature and some great photography. Then turn off your Kindle tablet and smile happily at what you have experienced. For true star gazers and those obsessed with the zodiac keep on reading about those straight lines and three-star triangles that someone once thought looked like a printing press or a pair of hounds or what ludicrous have you. It is as if DK followed up a book on the systems of water on earth with a large segment on viewing images of animals and obscure Catholic saints in the clouds. The follow-up section showing how to see what in the night skies is more useful to some I suspect. So I say 5 stars for the brilliance of the first 300-plus pages and ignore the rest.
This is a visually focused book which really works best as a physical coffee table type book — as a kindle book, even on an iPad, a regular website would be better. Beautiful images and relatively short, accessible explanations, and the whole thing is presented in a reasonably structured way (although it doesn’t really go into why the categories and distinctions are relevant, or much of the history — lots of short facts about why an object is named as it is and other details, which might be enough.)
Если вы хотите влюбиться в астрономию, то эта книга обеспечит. Если ваши дети найдут и откроют ее, то их постигнет та же участь.
Этот атлас, звездный, планетный, галактический — он беспредельно захватывающе красив. Им можно любоваться, разглядывая страницу за страницей. Его можно открыть на совершенно случайном месте и сразу утонуть.
An incredible subject. Deeply researched. Brilliantly presented. Generously covered. I need to be 50 years younger to begin to read it all. I am fascinated by the geology which I can comprehend. The illustrations are literally and metaphorically out of this world! Congratulations to the huge team who created this publication and to DK for publishing such a comprehensive and amazing book. It's HUGE!!
I would like to say "this is an amazing book" but I can't. I'm usually characterized a very patient person. I've waited, and tried so many time to view this book. I believe it is just too visually big to enjoy on a kindle or desktop, gave that a shot today. So if you really want to see this book, buy the hardcopy.
Easily 5 stars, just for the pictures alone. Loaded with information, some beyond my comprehension. But, I read it all. Each page is a learning experience, the photos breathtaking. Place this our on your coffee table and it's bound to be picked up by others. Easy to get caught up in...
A great reference book for anyone interested in astronomy. Lavishly illustrated but also highly informative. If you're interested in star gazing this book has everything you need to get started but a telescope!