Review by Choice Review
Vanin offers a pictorial review of the solar system, stars, nebulas, star clusters, and galaxies. The photographs and drawings are much larger and more numerous than those found in most other textbooks. Through the drawings and explanations that accompany the photographs, the author does a good job of giving a quick tour of the universe. The text portion is much more limited than most students would want but could serve as a reference or as a tool to spark interest for undergraduates. It should be noted that this is not a complete pictorial survey; e.g., photographs are provided for only two of the four Galilean satellites. Nevertheless, the book offers a good representation of typical and interesting objects. The last section is devoted to photographs from the Hubble telescope and includes a discussion of the telescope's difficulties. For general readers and undergraduate students. E. Kincanon Gonzaga University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Advancements in astronomy are intimately connected to technological innovations. None of the awe-inspiring color photographs found in these three books would have been possible without the creation of highly sophisticated telescopes, television, spacecraft, or computers. As noted astronomer John Gribbin reminds us in his preface to Hubble's Universe, the Hubble Space Telescope processes the clearest images ever seen of our galaxy and countless galaxies beyond. Goodwin follows with a concise history of telescopes, an explanation of exactly how the Hubble telescope works, and some help in attempting to comprehend the phenomenal sights the Hubble records. Talk about otherworldly beauty: these swirling, brilliantly hued portraits of planets and nebulae are breathtaking in their complexity. There is so much energy in these images, it's impossible not to believe that some form of life is at work in the universe, however unlike our own. Booth stays closer to home, chronicling the art of astrophotography within our own solar system. As he describes the progress of space exploration from the manned missions of the 1960s to the revelations of the robotic Voyager 1 and 2, superb color photographs graphically document the dramatic increase in distance traveled, from early shots of recognizable earthscapes to detailed pictures of the surprising surfaces of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. Booth is vividly descriptive and highly informative. Vanin covers the solar system quickly, then heads out into the mysterious realm of the magnificent nebulae. This overview of the recorded universe is the least aesthetically pleasing and most dryly written of the trio, but it is a useful resource, brimming, as it is, with facts, figures, and diagrams relating to the history of astronomy, the chemical composition of planets and stars, and explanations of phenomena such as quasars. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
