Visions of Heaven

The Hubble Space Telescope's spectacular pictures of nearby planets, remote stars, and distant galaxies captured the public imagination in a way not seen since the heady days of the Apollo Space Program. In Visions of Heaven, we see their full range, from the stellar nurseries where young stars are hatched out of immense clouds of gas and dust, to the magnificent remains, glowing across billions of miles, of once-mighty stars. But Hubble has brought us more than just glorious pictures: it offers new insights into the cosmos, and with them, the glimmering of answers to some of the most fundamental human questions. What really happened "in the beginning?" Is there life on other planets? What does the future hold? To the astronomer's eye, each of the Hubble pictures may tell a clear story, but the casual reader needs a guide to see and appreciate the deeper order contained within the images. Now, Visions of Heaven presents these remarkable pictures with a concise narrative that reveals the thrilling and moving stories behind them.