Lars Lindberg Christensen – författare

Hubble: 15 Years of Discovery forms a key element of the European Space Agency''s 15th anniversary celebration activities for the 1990 launch of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

As an observatory in space, Hubble is one of the most successful scientific projects of all time, both in terms of scientific output and its immediate public appeal.

Hubble continues to have an enormous impact by exploiting a unique scientific niche where no other instruments can compete. It consistently delivers super-sharp images and clean, uncontaminated spectra over the entire near-infrared and ultraviolet regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This has opened up new scientific territory and resulted in many paradigm-breaking discoveries.

Like no other telescope ever invented, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has given us magnificent high resolution views of the gigantic cosmic collisions between galaxies. Hubble''s images are snapshots in time and catch the colliding galaxies in different stages of collision. Thanks to a new and amazing set of 60 Hubble images, for the first time these different stages can be put together to form a still-frame movielike montage showing the incredible processes taking place as galaxies collide and merge.

The significance of these cosmic encounters reaches far beyond aesthetics. Galaxy mergers may, in fact, be some of the most important processes that shape our universe. Colliding galaxies very likely, hold some of the most important clues to our cosmic past and to our destiny. It now seems clear that the Milky Way is continuously undergoing merging events, some small scale, others on a gigantic scale. And the importance of this process in the lives of galaxies is much greater than what was previously thought.

At the dawn of 2012, its 50th anniversary year, ESO is ready to enter a new era. One that not even its founding members could have anticipated in their boldest dreams.

Constantly at the technological forefront, ESO is ready to tackle new and as yet unimaginable territories of high-precision technology and scientific discovery.

Produced especially for ESO''s 50th anniversary, this sumptuously illustrated book takes the reader behind the scenes of the most productive ground-based observatory in the world. It contains the best 300 of ESO''s images, hand-picked from a large collection of more than 100 000 images.

"Beautifully produced, Europe to the Stars tells the story of how dreams of giant telescopes became a reality and covers many of the exciting discoveries made at La Silla and Paranal."—BBC Sky at Night, 1 February 2013

"Leave the book on your coffee table, certainly, but read it first and come back to it regularly. It''s an intelligent, inspiring celebration of a great European scientific adventure."—Astronomy Now, 1 March 2013