Hubble's Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images Hardcover – September 6, 2012

“The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most ambitious, legendary and nail-biting science endeavors in human history. The payoff has been immeasurable: Hubble has given us the universe.’’Author’s enthusiasm for astronomy and Hubble really jumps off the page.Great effort! Why?“Still, no one imagined that Hubble’s photographs of deep space would be so utterly, jaw-droppingly beautiful. Or that the pictures would have a purely visceral appeal to an entire generation, making Hubble a household word synonymous with spectacular images of the cosmos.’’No question, these are ‘jaw-dropping’ pictures! Amazing! And . . .“Hubble photographs know no national, political or ideological boundaries. There are no language or cultural barriers to being completely entranced by Hubble’s vision. The images are so overpowering and humbling, they have touched people of all ages, a reminder that we inhabit a tiny planet in a vast universe with many remaining unknowns.’’So true! Another highlight is the brief, non-technical explanations of Hubble’s discoveries. For example . . .“Adam Riess wrote a computer program to calculate the universe’s deceleration rate using supernova survey data collected by Hubble, the computer kept coming up with a “negative mass” for the universe. Riess at first thought this was simply a programming error. But then he realized that the computer program was trying to make sense out of the nonsensical: There was a repulsive force in space. It’s ironic that the computer had reached this conclusion in a methodical way before Riess realized the awesome ramifications.’’Neat! Now we have a ‘repulsive force’. Is that all? Well . . .“The mystery lingered until scientists began to realize that only large amounts of hidden mass could support theories attempting to explain the structure of the universe. Galaxy clusters might be tied to an invisible scaffolding of so-called dark matter. In fact, we now know that this invisible form of matter comprises most of the universe’s mass and forms its basic underlying structure.’’‘Universe mostly invisible’! Wha . . . wha . . . what?“In 1994, Hubble astronomers quickly ruled out the possibility that faint red dwarf stars constitute dark matter. By simply counting the number of faint red stars in our galaxy’s outer halo, scientists determined that the Milky Way has too few of these stars to account for dark matter. This left dark matter as a problem for particle physicists. The best dark matter candidates are exotic elementary particles which have yet to be discovered with accelerator experiments and which interact very weakly with familiar particles and with themselves.’’We . . . do . . . not . . . know . . . what the most abundant atomic particle is . . . What is going on?“A property of space, dark energy fights against the gravitational pull of dark matter. It pushes galaxies apart from one another by stretching the space between them, thereby suppressing the formation of giant galaxy clusters. One way astronomers can probe this primeval tug-of-war is through mapping the distribution of dark matter in clusters.’’‘Universal tug-of-war’!Lots of . . . just . . . just . . . incredible, astonishing, wonderful pictures — insights!

I bought a book at Amazon a couple of years ago called "Far Out" by Michael Benson and it has some truly amazing images in it. I thought maybe this will be as good as it gets for consumer Astronomy picture books. It has now been surpassed. Just recently I bought "Hubble's Universe" by Terence Dickinson and am now finished the book. Every time you turn a page is WOW!!!! moment in your life. The images in this book are just stunning. Terence writes in a non-technical very reader friendly style and I've a couple of his books from the past but this thing has got to be the greatest astronomy picture book to be found. We see a lot of bad things in the news media about some people but this book is representative of some of mankind's highest achievements. The ability to create a technology in order to "see" objects that are hundreds of thousands of light years across and hundreds of millions of light years distant in such stunning detail is truly a unique human trait. Reading through this book is very humbling in that we humans are contemplating the unbelievably vast oceans of space, time and matter and we are insignificant bits of dust on Earth with extremely limited time spans. But we can also feel a sense of pride in our teams of scientists and engineers... and the every day tax-payers supporting them, who have enabled such a wonderful view of the cosmos. It would be a waste of time and money to buy a Kindle version of this book as the colourful images is what this book is about. You need the physical book for this one. Truly wonderful !!!! (Absolutely awesome !!! for residents of the USA)

Hubble's Universe - Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images - Terrance Dickinson (0681 - Astronomy - February 11, 2016)Launched in 1990 the Hubble space telescope continues to provide images of far superior sharpness and clarity than those from Earth base telescopes. Even those observatories located on mountain tops must contend with an ocean of turbulent air above it which degrades the viewing clarity.This is a coffee table book and deservedly so. Hard bound, massive, chock full of startling photographs you would want to peruse again and again - but wait there is more! The author has inserted a thoughtfully interesting survey of stellar evolution and the latest theories of how the universe began and may or may not end. No this is not a text book but sufficient information is presented in a way that may just motivated you or a curious student to pursue further studies.Not to carp over a minor point but by adding the subtitle "latest Images" as a subtitle on the cover instantly ages this book published in 2014. Nonetheless highly recommended.

My 5 year old great nephew announced at age 3 that he was going to be an astrologist or astronaut. He already knew the solar system at age 2. I got him a map of the galaxy and this book for Christmas. His daddy sent me a video of him taking notes from the book a day after Christmas. For privacy sake, I am not attaching the video.

My fiancé loves anything that has to do with space, and he already has a wide collection of books and DVD’s and such so I was a little gotta nervous about ordering this as he might already have it. Turns out he didn’t and he was amazed by this. I think this is a perfect gift for anyone with curiousity about space. The photos are beautiful and the book itself is big and has a lot of pictures. You can’t beat the price point either. Overall satisfied with this purchase.