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Webb's Universe - Maggie Aderin-Pocock ****

The Hubble was the space telescope that launched a thousand picture books destined for the coffee table, such as Hubble Legacy. Inevitably, its new, more capable brother, the Webb is following suit. Thankfully, though, this is more than just a picture book as you can only marvel so much over pretty pictures from space.

The book is structured into three sections - the first is about the telescope itself, beginning with its predecessors, including, for instance, some interesting material on the pros and cons of using a Lagrange point for a telescope. The second looks at Webb's mission - what it's intended to capture and how it will do that. And the final section, around twice as big as the other two added together, takes us through the already impressive range of Webb imagery.

That final section is where many such books descend into pure picture book territory, but Maggie Aderin-Pocock continues to include pages of informative text with diagrams showing, for example, how the solar system formed in a section featuring solar system images such as Jupiter and an impressive picture of the rings of Uranus. We then get a section on exoplanets (don't get too excited - the only detailed image is an artist's impression) before moving on to Webb's piece de resistance - nebulae (including the inevitable Pillars of Creation), stars and galaxies.

To achieve perfection, this book would have to have had more text still. For example, there's a tantalising mention of the discrepancy between the rate of expansion of the universe predicted from the cosmic microwave background and spectral analysis, but it's only a paragraph or two - it would have meant more to the reader if it had been expanded. And although big pages makes for bigger pictures, given that this is more than a coffee table book, it's distinctly heavy to hold to read. (Also, I almost docked it a star for putting 'Dr' in front of the author's name - decidedly cringeworthy.) Even so, it's one of the best of the bunch: it is, indeed, a collection of wonders.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

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  1. John Schepens28 October 2024 at 06:59

    Great review Brian, loved the "Dr" comment, Becky Smethurst does that same thing and I thought I was the only one annoyed by this front page inclusion

    ReplyDelete

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