Photographic Tour of the Universe

I have seen many general-interest astronomy and astrophotography books. This book is unique for a sequence of seven images (in the chapter on Types of Stars) running from hot blue Mintaka to cool reddish Betelguese. I bought the book for this sequence alone!

Like the previous reviewer, I purchased this book mainly to look at some Hubble photographs. Unlike the previous reviewer, I found much more to like about it. Photos provided are not just from Hubble but from a variety of different ground-based and orbiting telescopes. Some are rather dated, many are indeed beautiful, and ALL of them are interesting to look at. And each one is accompanied by often detailed descriptions of their content and on how the photos were taken; whether from visible light, infrared, or x-ray telescopes. The book's topics proceed logically from a brief, illustrated history of astrophotography; through a tour of our solar system; through a description of different types of stars, nebulas, and star clusters; through our Milky Way and beyond to distant galaxies; and finally to glimpses of the more distant parts of our universe courtesy of the Hubble Telescope. Though there are no ground breaking revelations here, I think there is a nice balance between the number and type of photographs provided and the volume of accompanying text. I've taken some astronomy courses and I think this book gives a straight forward, easy yet interesting introduction to our universe. Looking at the pictures is nice, but its also nice to read about what we are looking at and why they are important. Each section is also laced with a little history about how scientists and philosophers interpreted what they saw using the tools of their day. Overall, a fun book. Highly recommended!

Hoping to see more pictures from Hubble telescope,and less about the Hubble. Some pictures were outstanding. Some not very new. Some really good pictures may have been computer enhanced - difficult to tell sometimes. Overall a fair but disappointing book. Too much reading (words).