Customer Reviews

Hubble Vision: Further Adventures with the Hubble Space Telescope

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To the average person like myself it is simple uncomprehensable that way out here is all of this energy, peacefully and sometimes horrifically looming around us. Reading this book, and particularly looking intensely at the wonderful colour photographs, I cannot feel anything else but awe for the sheer original beauty of our universe, and the great bridges that we need to cross scientifically to even make an inch of sense of it. The text is easy enough for the pure enthusiast to understand the concepts, but for those with a thirst for knowledge, these pages reveal centuries of human time devoted to exploring milleniums and milleniums of universal time. It really does make you feel as though the only thing between us and the secret of everything is our humble mortality, not our need to know. Hubble Vision gives you a snapshot of the heavens, and beyond, something we'll never experince first hand in our life-time at least!

This is a book about big science in space. The hubble telescope was the most complex piece of scientific equipment that was ever built to operate off of Earth. From its initial "mistake" in a poorly honed hyperbolic mirror - its "correction" became a major media event that nearly busted Nasa's budget - to the innumerable failing subsystems in constant need of adjustment, its success is something of a phenomenon.

But a success it indisputably was, one of the greatest in the history of human endeavor and easily the equal to, say, the creation of the Gothic cathedral. Images from the telescope have become so uniquitous, such as its use as background in Star Trek, that we would be shocked if they disappeared. Of course, the advancement of virtually all fields of astronomy that it spawned will enrich us forever. Not only can we plumb the composition of stars and search for planets more accurately, but such scientific givens as the Hubble constant are coming into question with the precision measurements not coming available. Even amateurs, if they come up with an interesting proposal, can get a crack at making scientific history.

Peterson and Brandt cover these developments competently and clearly, with gorgeous photos throughout the book to add to its wonder. While they do not cover they public policy angle alll too well, the science is enough (even if it gets a bit too gee-whiz for my taste at times).

Warmly recommended.

Your taxes paid for Hubble.

You really should get this book, and look at the pictures.

It is outstanding.