The Universe: 365 Days

We have purchased several of these books - one for ourselves and the others as gifts. It is awesome.

There is a website called "Astronomy Picture of the Day". The website is exactly what it claims to be. Every day the website posts a new picture related to astronomy with a description of that picture written by a professional astronomer. With the first archived photo on that website from June 16, 1995, the editors of "The Universe: 365 Days" had nearly 8 years of photographs to draw on when this volume was published in May 2003. This book can be used like a calendar because that is how this book is laid out: every day of the year has an astronomy photograph, with a description of each picture. As someone who knows very little about the universe, or astronomy, even with the descriptions next to the pictures I still wasn't always sure what I was looking at and how one picture was truly different from another. I understand that they look different and that they are pictures of very different parts of the universe, but the details are far beyond my comprehension. What is not beyond my comprehension is the fact that these are stunningly beautiful pictures. Even simple pictures that we may have seen many times before, like a picture of our planet from space, is striking and beautiful. Others are of star clusters and galaxies that are so far away and so alien that it boggles the mind to know that there are places like this out there and we really know nothing about what it would be like to travel there. This book can be read as a calendar, where you flip the page each day and see what new photograph is waiting. It can be read like that, but I couldn't imagine only looking at one of these pictures a day. After seeing one picture, I just had to turn the page to see what wonder was waiting for me, and almost without exception, there was a wonder on every page. Beautiful space photography (though some are on Earth, and others looking out from Earth). If that sounds interesting, this collection is probably for you. -Joe Sherry

This book is nothing short of phenomenal. I keep buying it for people because I know they will be enthralled. Each photograph is awe inspiring and the accompanying text just boggles the mind. You can get lost for several minutes just gazing at a single photograph, contemplating the nature of the universe. Petty concerns dissolve as you stretch your mind around the concepts so beautifully depicted. This book is a treasure to enjoy for a lifetime.

You know about the Astronomy Picture of the Day website, don't you? If not, check it out; I can't post the URL here but a quick search will turn it up.This book is a collection of some of the very best pictures from that marvellous site. Most of the pictures are images of Very Cool Stuff from around the cosmos: comets whacking into Jupiter, galaxies forming, that sort of thing. And wow, it sure is _big_ out there.The stuff close to home is fascinating enough in its own right that the book pays for itself with just the images from within our very own solar system. The shots of the other planets and their moons are culled from the various flyby missions and, naturally, they are _way_ better than anything that was available when I was a kid.There are a few that are _very_ close to home, and these are cool too. Some show either the Earth (from orbit) or a view of its sky (during the Hale-Bopp visitation, for example). A handful are of other things entirely (including one of the most effective Magic Eye pictures I've ever seen).They are all of them stunning, captivating, and gorgeous. If you aren't pretty much transfixed by this stuff, then you and I probably aren't from the same homeworld.And the short commentary that accompanies each image was written by a qualified, competent astronomer. Does life _get_ any better than this?Don't forget to visit the website, too. There are lots more images in its archives than would fit into this book.

If you've spent some time on the Internet, you've come across the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APoD) website, run by astrophysicists Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. Once a day they post up a space-related picture, provide a handy description. I've said to myself on several occasions, that these guys should write a book. Well, now they have.The Universe: 365 Days is a print version of APoD, and it's one of the most gorgeous astronomy books I've ever seen. Open it up to any page: on your right is a full-page photograph, and on your left is a paragraph description about the picture. That's it, 365 pages of description/picture, rinse, repeat. Not much else to say. If you like pictures of space and astronomy, then you're going love it, page after page.Because there are so many photographs, the authors were able to draw from a large pool of images. So, it isn't just the same old NASA/Hubble pictures that everyone uses, there are some from more obscure observatories and even amateur astronomers. There's a handy index at the back so you seek out images by topic.I understand why they decided to go with the whole 365 days concept; it's a connection to their website. But then, it's not like you're going to read the book one day at a time, like some kind of yearlong astronomical advent calendar.Let me just stick my drooling tongue back in my mouth for a second and let you know my complaints with the book. First, the text is really small. Unreasonably small considering that it's swimming in white space. The layout person should have been thinking about all the people who might be reading this book, and steered well away from 9 point font. My other complaint is that it feels fragile. Imagine you're holding a stack of nearly 400 photographs bound together on the left-hand side. I'm worried that it might come apart with all the use it'll get sitting on a coffee table. I'm afraid to let my kid look through it, as she'll render it into pulp in minutes.Still, complaints aside The Universe: 365 Days is a fantastic book. Gorgeous photographs put into context by scientists who've had years of experience boiling complex concepts into handy, bite-sized write-ups.