Magnificent Universe

The awesome wonder of the cosmos has inspired the human imagination for millennia: what we learn about the cosmos tells us not just where we are, but who we are and now, at the turn of this millennium, thanks to science and technology that were unimaginable only a century ago, a rich new portrait of our universe has emerged.

Magnificent Universe is the most complete, authoritative, and lavish celebration of the heavens ever created. No other book approaches its range of photographs, produced with uncompromising quality on a majestic scale. With more than one hundred full-color portraits, Magnificent Universe allows you to experience for yourself the beauty of the planets, moons, comets, constellations, stellar nurseries, red giants, WP, spiral galaxies, and quasars -- all the way to the edge of space and time.

Harvard-trained astronomer Ken Croswell stunned readers around the world with his previous book, Planet Quest, which Sir John Maddox called "a thrilling account of the discovery of planets in the solar system and elsewhere that stands out for its human interest and its accuracy." Now, after years of meticulous research, Dr. Croswell has brought together outstanding photographs from leading observatories around the world as well as from an armada of interplanetary spacecraft. Images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been digitally reprocessed to create a degree of definition never seen before. With these superb photographs, he guides us through lucidly organized chapters on the planets, the stars, the galaxies, and the universe. Unique color-coded tables on the planets, moons, brightest stars, nearest stars, and Local Group galaxies appear in a useful reference section, along with a glossary and suggestions for further reading.

Magnificent Universe catapults you through the vistas of space that future generations will explore. It is a landmark in the scientific visualization of the cosmos -- one that will surely inspire artists, philosophers, and adventures of the next century.

Not all astronomers are totally thrilled with the Hubble Space Telescope. "That's not data, it's pictures," they complain. But what pictures: never has the universe seemed so gorgeous, powerful, diverse: in a word, magnificent. Only part of the pictures in Ken Croswell's Magnificent Universe are from the Hubble, but all cleave to the same high standard. Whether of Mars, a supernova, or galaxies in collision, they are beautiful. The paper in the book is glossy black, which is ideal for bringing out colors and details in the photographs, each of which covers an entire very large page. The white-on-black text is less special, meant more for browsing than for learning. It's rather a pity, because Croswell's other books (The Alchemy of the Heavens and Planet Quest) are written in a style both witty and informative.

The only astronomy coffee-table book that can begin to compare to this one for beauty is Full Moon. The black-and-white photos in the latter have a stark loveliness with something of the chill of space; the pictures in Magnificent Universe are colorful and even exciting, giving the reader sheer, sensual pleasure along with their sense of wonder. --Mary Ellen Curtin