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Hubble Vision: Astronomy with the Hubble Space Telescope

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One of the greatest achievements in the history of humanity with regard to observational astronomy has to be the Hubble Space Telescope, our first real opportunity to see the universe 'up close and personal', in the visual light spectrum (among other spectra) without the interference of the earth's atmosphere. Launched in 1990, there was a collective gasp when it was discovered that this remarkable achievement needed specs (not the construction-data kind, but the old-fashioned kind - eyeglasses)! Not long thereafter, a shuttle mission set forth to do the needed repairs, and since then the results have been stunning.

Carolyn Collins Petersen, an award-winning science writer with some specialty in astronomy, together with John C. Brandt, a researcher at the University of Colorado (he's even had an asteroid named for him), put together this early major book on the Hubble achievements. Their first chapter gives a brief history of the HST (Hubble Space Telescope) project, from concept to launch. They recount a narrative history of the first indications that there were problems, the excitement and the disappointment, as well as the correction. The sections on the history of observation and the technical specifications of the HST are interesting, as well, but the real glory is in the pictures.

Throughout the rest of the text, the authors put pictures from the HST of the major objects in the sky together with composite pieces and partial images. For some of the planetary images, the authors show side-by-side comparisons with some of the planetary exploration missions (Voyager, etc.), and even against the close-up images, HST fares well. The photography of stars in all their various life-stages, gaseous formations to final supernovae, are glorious and informative. The galaxy images give great and stunning detail of some of the most distant structures. Alas, even the HST has trouble discerning in detail objects such as quasars, which remain a mystery, but more data has been obtained than ever before.

The final chapter discusses topics such as distances, universal expansion, dark matter, and how the HST plays an observational role in collecting evidence in support of or variance to current theories on the universe. Petersen and Brandt discuss the general trends in cosmological thinking, accessible to the non-scientist and interesting to the scientifically trained.

The epilogue is a bit moot at this point, as the text written in the early 1990s only covered the time period up to 2002; however, the HST project is a big-budget item, which means it is a political item, and the budgetary concerns, both institutional (NASA-related) and governmental (will Congress and Presidential administrations support it?) are always a concern. Hubble continues to be a source of pride for the NASA community, and a source of great information for the astronomical community around the world.

This is a coffee-table book as well as an interesting scientific text.

Good overview for the general reader how cosmological observational data is obtained, in this reference in the context of the cutting-edge Hubble space telescope.