Book review by Maurice Gavin   www.astroman.fsnet.co.uk ...my homepage ..Ewell AS homepage.  my spectro books

Universe - a journey from Earth to the edge of the Cosmos

Universe - a journey from Earth to the edge of the Cosmos
By Nicholas Cheetham
Smith-Davies Publishing - London 2005
ISBN:1-905204-00-0
Pages: 224 glossy to B4 size
Cost £25 [discounted to £10 at Chessington Garden Centre - Oct 2005]

This is a large and beautiful book in full colour on a black background that brings every image to life in startling contrast.  Drawn from photographic archives worldwide it is a compendium of the best astronomical images from ground and space observatories.

It starts a journey from Earth moving outward through the Solar System and local Milky Way to the far reaches of the Universe.   Each successive page is referenced in light-time [1 seconds = 300,000km] from Earth beginning with the Moon at 1.3 light seconds to the penultimate illustration at 13.4 billion light years showing the background radiation from the Big Bang.

Uniquely the book contains no distractions like pictures of observatories or personalities.  It concentrates exclusively on the stunning beauty of the Universe with fully descriptive captions for each image.  Many of the images may be familiar to the reader but few will have seen them better presented or at such high resolution. We view the pockmarked satellites of Jupiter through to Neptune from visiting spacecraft and even 2004 discovered planetoid Sedna gets a picture - if much pixelated due to its extreme range from Earth.

Particularly beautiful is the symmetry of planetary nebulae in the nearer regions of our Milky Way and beyond our Local Cluster of Galaxies, the galaxies in collision in deep space. Nearing the end of the book is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field where hundreds of distant galaxies dominate the view amongst a handful of local stars. The book has an informative preamble "Into the light" and glossary of astronomical terms, full picture credits and index.   Some may call this a coffee-table book - its appeal is much wider than just the astronomical community - but we gain from its publication immensely.

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