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Hubble

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The Hubble Space Telescope is a technological wonder of our age that has fascinated millions with its beautiful and awe-inspiring images of the Universe. Fully updated with over 40 brand new images, this stunning new edition showcases the Hubble Space Telescope’s most spectacular—and most recent—discoveries such as the water plumes of Jupiter’s moon Europa, the beautiful Necklace Nebula, hidden structure in distant galaxies, and the mysteries of dark matter and energy. Giles Sparrow’s expert narrative brings Hubble’s fascinating story up to date, telling how it became one of the most successful scientific projects of all time; charting its origins and troubled launch in 1990, the emergency repair of its defective mirror, the advances made by four subsequent servicing missions, and the lasting impact of the most amazing astronomical instrument ever created. Hubble—Legacy Edition will take you on a journey through space in more than 400 glorious full-color images.

223 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 2010

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Giles Sparrow

226 books29 followers

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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
Profile Image for Joan.
2,875 reviews52 followers
July 28, 2021
Beginnings. Our Solar System in Perspective. Servicing Missions 1 and 2. A New View of the Stars. Servicing Mission 3A. Servicing Mission 3B. Looking Beyond the Milky Way. Servicing Mission 4. Looking Beyond Space and Time. The Next Generation.

The wonders of the universe as seen through the eye of the Hubble Space Telescope. With just enough text to provide the necessary information for the stunning photographic display in this coffee table-sized book. Views of planets, moons, nebulae, deep space . . . the spectacular photographs included here showcase the capabilities of the telescope as they create a window into the universe to reveal sights never before seen.

A Hubble Space Telescope Instrumentation and Glossary is included.

Highly recommended.
61 reviews
February 4, 2023
This is a beautiful coffee-table book. It is filled with pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. it took me a fairly long time to read the book, as I found myself taking it in small chunks so that I could absorb some of the knowledge I gained from the narrative. I loved the pictures, and appreciated that the narrative was informative with just enough information to help me understand what I was seeing in the photos. I enjoyed the book, and also learned some astronomy.
Profile Image for Anton Klink.
191 reviews38 followers
May 16, 2013
A beautiful, large format, coffee table size photo book of stars and galaxies as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope with lots of amazing photos, the book is somewhat marred by lack of proper proof-reading and a conservative layout.

The structure of the book is excellent. Starting from our own solar system, it moves to other objects in our galaxy and then to galaxies beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Interspersed are stories about Hubble, its beginnings and its various upgrade phases. All the pictures in the book taken by Hubble are also clearly marked as to which upgrade phase they belong to. It was quite enjoyable to see the evolution from Hubble's underwhelming initial imaging capabilities to the wonderful images it started producing after its subsequent upgrades.

The introductory texts of each new stellar object are professional and informative. Not overly complicated and just enough to give the basics and allow the reader to appreciate and understand what is in the pictures. The photo captions themselves are a bit less exciting and sometimes a bit redundant but they do the job.

The meat of the book of course is the pictures. For the most part, they are wonderful and when they are not, it is not really the fault of the book but rather stemming from Hubble's initial low imaging capabilities.

On the downside, the book exhibits some serious proofreading problem. First of all, typos and spelling errors are far too numerous to be acceptable for a science book. Granted, we can all read our way through typos, but unfortunately the problem doesn't stop there. For example the text on page 78 under Carina Nebula is repeated again on page 192 under Antennae Galaxies, where it has absolutely no relevance. It looks like parts of page 78 were just copied and pasted to page 192 (and some parts even more than once), whereas the text that was actually supposed to be on page 192 and talk about Antennae Galaxies is completely missing. When shoddy editing results in not just typos, but whole paragraphs of text gone missing, that is no longer acceptable.

Another problem is that since all the pages are black (with white text), the pages are fingerprint magnets. I agree that stylistically black pages fit the theme perfectly. After all, we are talking about the universe and displaying pictures of stars and galaxies. I've seen photo books of the universe with white pages and the contrast between the white pages and dark pictures can be quite jarring. In that respect, I quite like the decision here to go all black. Yet the black of the pages is extremely sensitive to fingerprints, so you have to be careful when turning the pages.

A third nibble is rather due to competition by publishing houses like Doring Kindersley. The layout of DK's books are intensely visual with no wasted space almost anywhere. Every available space is filled with either text, visuals, photos, factoids etc, so you always feel like you got your money's worth and then some. In comparison, the layout of this book looks quite conservative. It is serviceable but in the end, there is just a lot of black empty space on many of the pages with nothing on it (except maybe some fingerprints, if you were not careful). Having being spoiled by DK books not wasting any space on any page, the amount of empty space in this book felt a bit disappointing.

Still, even though the layout if this book is conventional and the proofreading leaves to be desired, I still found the book informative and the pictures beautiful. For anyone interested in science, space and the Hubble Space Telescope, this book is highly recommended.
Profile Image for Anup Sinha.
Author 3 books6 followers
May 21, 2019
I can’t imagine a better book on the Hubble Space Telescope, coffee table or otherwise. The pictures are just a part of it, Sparrow organizes it well and tells a story starting with our solar system and working his way out to the farthest galaxies and the Big Bang. Lots of great information, an astronomy book for the ages.

Regarding the HST itself, I gained even more appreciation for what it has brought us. It’ll be a sad day when it stops snapping photos, but I’ll be in line to see it when it hopefully gets dragged back to earth in one piece. And I (and the world) have much anticipation for what the Webb Telescope will find out next.
Profile Image for Rosita.
5 reviews3 followers
November 7, 2012
wooooooow!!!! I've received it 10 minutes ago, I've just opened it and see a few pages and I can say that's the book of my dreams! I'm already in love with it! It's huge with breathtaking pictures of the Solar System and Outer space, with a brief description. A must-have for everyone who's fascinated by astronomy.
Profile Image for Peter.
37 reviews
January 10, 2012
A beautiful coffee table book. Well worth the money.
Profile Image for Caesaree.
58 reviews3 followers
February 11, 2011
The most amazing, unbelievable photos. Some day I will go into space.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews

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