Customer Reviews

Visions of the Cosmos

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When I opened Carolyn Peterson and John Brandt's book, my jaw dropped as I leafed through the fantastic pictures in the opening chapter. It's a wide ranging survey of astronomical beauty, from Mars and the sun out to gorgeous Hubble Space Telescope images of galaxies.

Chapter 2 then changes to spectacular photos of mountaintop observatories, followed by descriptions, and then segueing into space telescopes. The book continues in this way: large-scale, well printed photographs taking up as much or more space than well-written descriptions. The chapter on planets takes this mix from pages 50 to 90. Stars and nebulae then go from 91 to 130 followed by galaxies through page 157. A beautiful photo of Easter Island heads marks the opening spread of the final chapter, "The once and future universe," with discusses cosmology, including the latest from Hubble and from the details shown by the cosmic background radiation. A final chapter on stargazing shows future plans for telescopes and spacecraft. I hope that someone really builds the "Overwhelming Large" telescope, OWL.

With lists of extra readings and Websites, and a glossary to help, I can't think of a better book to introduce people to the glories of the universe.

Jay Pasachoff

This is a great book for anyone interested in astronomy. It's easy to read, it's informative, and it has some incredible and beautiful pictures ... plenty of them! And no math to slow down the readers.

It tells the reader about distances. And about the spectrum, and related temperatures. And all sorts of wonderful things about telescopes. There's a really nice description of our planetary system. We get to learn some fundamental properties of stars, and you are taught about the main sequence and H-R diagrams. We read about star formation: protostars, accretion disks, and Herbig-Haro objects. And about extrasolar planets.

Next we learn about star death. That means looking at planetary nebulae, supernovae, and cataclysmic variable stars. And there's a discussion of Gamma-ray bursters.

Then we look at galaxies. We find out how galaxies are categorized and learn about galactic evolution and mergers and star formation rates. And about active galaxies, quasars, and black holes.

After that, there is a chapter on cosmology. We find out about dark matter and dark energy. And how the expansion of our universe is accelerating.

The final chapter is about future space missions and telescopes. That includes missions to Mars, a comet impact in 2005, and space telescopes that may find some more extrasolar planets. In addition we read about a proposal for a 100-meter ground-based scope, the OWL (OverWhelmingly Large Telescope). As well as the Low-Frequency Array, a set of thousands of antennas that might not be built in the Netherlands, as the array may be larger than that nation.

I think it may be worth getting this book for the pictures alone. It would be a good gift item.