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The whole story of the Hubble Space Telescope can be found in Hubble by
Daniel Fischer and Hilmar Duerbeck (Springer-Verlag, £19.50/$35,
ISBN 0 387 94672 1)—how it was launched with the telescopic equivalent
of a squint, the billion-dollar repair mission mounted by NASA and, finally,
the triumph of spotting Cepheid stars in the Virgo cluster of galaxies,
enabling astronomers to pin down the size and age of the Universe. But it is
the colour pictures which make this book wonderful to behold. Buy it and
feast your eyes on glorious images from the ultimate eye in the sky.