Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe - Hardcover

Kerrod, Robin; Stott, Carole

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1554073162 ISBN 13: 9781554073160

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2007

Synopsis

The latest photos from Hubble's recent discoveries, with fascinating new and updated information.

After 17 years, 25,000 astronomical targets and more than 700,000 images, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) continues to return images and data that amaze astronomers. Within the past few months alone, the Hubble has revealed a gold mine of just-formed star systems in the newborn Universe, provided detailed views of a second red spot emerging on Jupiter, and confirmed that monster black holes lurk at the center of galaxies.

This brand new and updated edition features:

• 80 new full-color images
• A new introduction that reveals Hubble's future
• The data behind Pluto's recent demotion to non-planetary status
• Hubble's most important and fascinating new discoveries
• Explanations of how these new discoveries are revising scientific understanding of the Universe.

New photographs reveal astonishing and previously unseen details of what once appeared only as gray blurs or dots on a star map. Examples include the Eagle Nebula and the birth of a star; newly formed stars blowing a cavity in the center of the Small Magellanic Cloud; colliding Antennae galaxies; and a massive galaxy just under assembly.

Hubble transports readers beyond our solar system to galaxies millions -- even billions -- of light years away. These dramatic, unforgettable new images bring into sharp focus the ways in which the Universe is unfolding in new and astonishing ways.

About this title

About the Author:

Robin Kerrod was a Fellow of both the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Interplanetary Society. His numerous books include The Sky at Night and History of NASA.

Formerly a professional astronomer, Carole Stott is now a full-time space science writer. She is the author of more than 20 books.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction

Before we look at the universe through the HST's supersensitive eyes, let's set the scene. What, broadly speaking, is this universe of ours like? One thing for sure is that it is vast -- unimaginably vast. The Earth, Moon, planets, Sun, and stars are nothing but tiny specks of matter floating in an unfathomable immensity of space -- minuscule, insignificant plankton floating in an infinitely deep cosmic ocean.

When we cast our eyes up to the night sky and see a glittering firmament of twinkling stars set in the velvety blackness that is space, we are looking out at one little corner of this ocean, of this universe of ours.

Dominating the sky by night is the silvery Moon, Earth's closest companion in space -- its only natural satellite. An airless, heavily cratered ball of rock, it is the only other world that human beings have set foot on -- yet.

Next come the ultrabright stars that seem to wander through the heavens. But they are not stars at all: they are planets. What an extraordinary collection of bodies the planets are. They are all quite different from the planet we know best -- planet Earth. Closer to the Sun, Mercury, and Venus are oven-hot, while Mars farther out is cold, but might once have been warmer and supported some kind of life. Farther out still are gigantic Jupiter and other gas giants. And farthest out, are the dwarf planets, Pluto and Eris, two small ice worlds.

Dominating the sky by day is the golden orb of the Sun, which brings warmth, light, and life to Earth. It also dominates near space with its powerful gravity, keeping the planets and a host of smaller bodies circling round it. All these bodies make up the Sun's family, or solar system.

The Sun is quite a different body from the planets: it is a huge globe of searing hot gas. It is our local star, just like the myriad other stars in the heavens but very much closer. The other stars, those pinpricks of light in the night sky, are so far away that their light takes years to reach us on Earth (light from the Sun takes just over 8 minutes). Astronomers use the distance light travels in a year (about 6 trillion miles! 9.5 trillion km) as a measure for expressing distances in space. They call it the light-year. It is the unit we use throughout the book.

The Sun is a very ordinary star, of about average size (nearly 1 million miles/1.6 million km across) and average brightness. There are stars that are very much bigger and brighter, and others that are very much smaller and dimmer.

Since the dawn of astronomy at least five millennia ago, stargazers have used patterns made by the bright stars to guide them across the night sky. These patterns are the constellations. Astronomers use Latin names for the constellations, which refer to figures ancient stargazers thought they could see in the patterns of stars. A few constellations live up to their names (Leo, the Lion; Scorpius, the Scorpion; Cygnus, the Swan), but most don't.

All stars are born in great billowing clouds of gas that occupy the space between the stars. After shining steadily for perhaps tens of billions of years, stars begin to die. They may exit the universe relatively quietly, as the Sun will eventually, or disappear in a fantastic supernova explosion. The end products of their death throes will be superdense bodies like white dwarfs and neutron stars, or the most awesome objects we know in the universe -- black holes.

The stars we see in the night sky may lie many thousands of light-years away, but they are still close neighbors in the universe. They all belong to a great star island in space -- a galaxy. The universe is made up of innumerable island galaxies, separated by virtually empty space.

Our galaxy, called the Milky Way or just the Galaxy, probably contains at least 500 billion stars. It measures some 100,000 light-years across and has a spiral shape. Many galaxies are like it, but others are elliptical in shape or have no regular shape at all. We can see just three galaxies in the night sky with the naked eye. They are the Magellanic Clouds in the far southern skies and the Andromeda Galaxy in northern skies.

Some galaxies are extraordinary, pumping out much more energy into the universe than usual, particularly at radio wavelengths. Called active galaxies, they include enigmatic bodies such as quasars and blazars. Black holes seem to be the engines that generate their exceptional power.

Just as stars group together to form great stellar island galaxies, so galaxies themselves group together to form clusters. 0ur own Galaxy is part of a relatively small group of about 30 galaxies. But we know of clusters containing thousands of galaxies. In their turn, even clusters group together to form superclusters. And on the largest scale, it is strings of superclusters, interspersed with empty voids, that make up the universe.

How can we put such an enormous universe in perspective? With great difficulty -- but we can try. Let's suppose we have been able to build an interstellar and intergalactic starship, capable of traveling at the speed of light, and take an incredible journey into space. Setting off from Earth, we would reach the Moon in 1 1/2 seconds and flash pass Venus in 2 1/2 minutes. In less than 8 1/2 minutes we would be leaving the Sun behind, heading for the distant dwarf planet Pluto. We would reach this tiny world in 5 1/2 hours. But it would take several months longer before we escaped completely from the gravitational influence of the Sun and left the solar system. Now traveling in interstellar space, we wouldn't reach even the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) for more than 4 years.

To explore our Galaxy would require flight times measured in tens of thousands of years -- 25,000 years to reach the Galaxy's center, twice as long again to reach its edge. To make a visit to our galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, we would have a journey time of 2.5 million years. And to reach the farthest objects we can see in the universe, we would have to journey for at least 12 billion years. This is nearly as long as the universe has existed.

About this edition

• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1554073162
• ISBN 13: 9781554073160
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192