Hi there helpful forum members.
I know that this may be a hard task, but I'm desperately trying to track a really excellent space book down...please help!
Foolishly, I failed to buy it when it was in my hands a few years ago, and have regretted so much it ever since!
I still remember it very clearly:
It is a large format picture book. I think it was hardcover, approx 40 pages.
From memory it is roughly square, very black and glossy like all good photographic astronomy books.
It is a book that looks at the scale of the known universe.
It is a very graphic book - little or no text whatsoever inside it.
I could be wrong, but I think the title is just 'space' or 'galaxy' or 'universe' - heavily used titles which have made it very hard to find!
I think I remember the title being written in either silver or white lettering.
The technology behind the imagery looked fairly new, so it couldn't be more than 10 years old.
The main format of the book is that the space from one page becomes a detail for the next, each page using a system of wireframe cubes that gradually encompass greater areas of space - each page lists the scale of the wireframe cubes clearly in large white numbers.
So the scale of each image on each page becomes concentrically larger, each page using the previous as detail.
For example, I think it starts off at the Earth, and ends up at the edge of the entire known universe. The illustrations become increasingly abstract, using those very colourful blob-like pixelated images of super-clusters towards the end of the book. Perhaps it is radio telescope imagery?
In the end, the entire universe is pictured as an ambiguous biomorphic mass, accompanied by an incredibly huge scale measurement.
It's a very simple idea and powerful, and the illustrations are so beautiful, and the system of concentric scales via 3D cubes is very effective.
It's actually very similar to the system of scales used in that famous Wolfgang Voigt filmclip:
YouTube - Gas - Microscopic (Ambient Electronic Space)
If you could please help me with an ID for this book, I would be most, most, most appreciative. It's really important that I find this book (again).
There's a valuable lesson to be learnt here - that one should always acquire that special book at the very time when it is in the hands!
Best wishes and hope to hear from someone soon,
Justin.
I know that this may be a hard task, but I'm desperately trying to track a really excellent space book down...please help!
Foolishly, I failed to buy it when it was in my hands a few years ago, and have regretted so much it ever since!
I still remember it very clearly:
It is a large format picture book. I think it was hardcover, approx 40 pages.
From memory it is roughly square, very black and glossy like all good photographic astronomy books.
It is a book that looks at the scale of the known universe.
It is a very graphic book - little or no text whatsoever inside it.
I could be wrong, but I think the title is just 'space' or 'galaxy' or 'universe' - heavily used titles which have made it very hard to find!
I think I remember the title being written in either silver or white lettering.
The technology behind the imagery looked fairly new, so it couldn't be more than 10 years old.
The main format of the book is that the space from one page becomes a detail for the next, each page using a system of wireframe cubes that gradually encompass greater areas of space - each page lists the scale of the wireframe cubes clearly in large white numbers.
So the scale of each image on each page becomes concentrically larger, each page using the previous as detail.
For example, I think it starts off at the Earth, and ends up at the edge of the entire known universe. The illustrations become increasingly abstract, using those very colourful blob-like pixelated images of super-clusters towards the end of the book. Perhaps it is radio telescope imagery?
In the end, the entire universe is pictured as an ambiguous biomorphic mass, accompanied by an incredibly huge scale measurement.
It's a very simple idea and powerful, and the illustrations are so beautiful, and the system of concentric scales via 3D cubes is very effective.
It's actually very similar to the system of scales used in that famous Wolfgang Voigt filmclip:
YouTube - Gas - Microscopic (Ambient Electronic Space)
If you could please help me with an ID for this book, I would be most, most, most appreciative. It's really important that I find this book (again).
There's a valuable lesson to be learnt here - that one should always acquire that special book at the very time when it is in the hands!
Best wishes and hope to hear from someone soon,
Justin.