Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

For more than a decade, the Hubble Space Telescope has been sending
thousands of spectacular telescopic images back to Earth. Many of the
photographs have changed the way scientists now view the universe.
Lights in the sky that from Earth look like single dim stars are
suddenly revealed to be intricate clusters of millions of stars. Hazy
patches are revealed to be whole galaxies being born or destroyed. Other
photos are stunning in their beauty.

This splendid coffee-table book features some of the most significant
photographs that the Hubble has captured over the past 10 years. The
text is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1, “Stars in the
Firmament,” is a general review of what scientists know about stars.
Chapter 2, “Stellar Death and Destruction,” examines how stars are
created and die. “Gregarious Galaxies,” the third chapter, discusses
the various types of galaxies that exist in the universe. “The
Expansive Universe” shows what the Hubble has enabled scientists to
learn about the birth, life, and ultimate fate of the entire universe.
The last two chapters, “Solar System” and “The Heavenly
Wanderers,” give us a look at planets in our own solar system and
beyond.

The text, by veteran astronomer Robin Kerrod, is very informative yet
easy for the novice to understand. Each chapter is broken down into
subchapters that enable the reader to absorb data in small bites. No
words, however, can match the sheer attention-grabbing beauty of the
Hubble photographs. Virtually every page in this book is a barrage of
dazzling full-colour images. If you have a hankering for some amazing
photos of hot dwarfs and cool giants, helium flashes, bubbles, and
cosmic ripples, this superb book will deliver.