Many of my books are text-intensive works
of reference so it was a pleasant contrast to produce a
sumptuously illustrated volume such as this. It had its origins
in a request from the publisher for a book of Hubble Space
Telescope pictures. I pointed out that there already were such
books on the market and, in addition, HST had its limitations
– the best wide-field views are still taken from
ground-based observatories and the spectacular images from
space probes deserved consideration, too. Thus was born this
photographic tour of the Universe.
Many months were spent searching not only
for the best images but also the best-quality versions of them.
NASA’s online Planetary Photojournal now contains
beautifully reprocessed versions of classic space probe
pictures that had previously been seen only in garish and
grainy prints or duplicate transparencies. In addition, I was
able to incorporate the latest electronically processed
versions of David Malin’s pictures taken at the
Anglo–Australian Observatory, which have wider fields and
improved colour fidelity than the versions previously seen.
Other images in the book, though, will look much less familiar.
Around this visual thread leading from the
Earth to the edge of the visible Universe I wrote explanatory
text and captions and produced page layouts in Quark XPress.
The book first appeared as a hardback in
early 2002 under the title The Times
Space, it being
part of a series of books produced by HarperCollins for The Times newspaper
in London, which is owned by the same parent company. The
cover, designed by HarperCollins, is a particular favourite of
mine (see left).
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At the start of 2004 a revised paperback
edition appeared under the title The
Times Universe. This included some
new Hubble Space Telescope pictures, such as the superb view of
the Helix Nebula on the cover, and a revised spread on
cosmology incorporating the observations of the cosmic
background radiation from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe.
Future plans are to produce an enlarged
edition incorporating results from the current Mars probes and
the Cassini mission to Saturn.
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