Close Encounters: Exploring the Universe with the Hubble Space Telescope

Grade 5-8AScott follows up her Adventure in Space: The Flight to Fix the Hubble (Hyperion, 1995) with this equally outstanding explanation of why the effort to repair the orbiting telescope's faulty components was worthwhile. She opens with a telling pair of before-and-after photographs: the first a blur that looks like a fried green egg, the second a sharply focused, dramatically swirling spiral galaxy. After a summary history of astronomy and telescopes, the author goes on to describe the value of this new clarity; scientists can now observe phenomena as close in time and space as local weather on Mars, or as distant as the birth of solar systems, the deaths of stars, and the mysteries of black holes. Artists' renditions and archival portraits of scientists involved with the space telescope enhance the many vividly reproduced full-color photos of deep space. In her matching text, Scott is specific about both how the different instruments on Hubble are used, and what they tell us. Some pages of text are printed on grayed-out star fields, not the best choice for legibility, but that's a minor bobble in this meaty, cogent report.AJohn Peters, New York Public Library Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.