author : Paul Murdin

Now the universe has become a common property. Space exploration is a reality. Information from X-rays, cosmic rays, neutrinos, space probes, ultraviolet wavelengths, radio waves and the most powerful optical telescopes is flooding in from the deepest parts of space. Theories and models are emerging to account for the most unlikely phenomena. We are on the verge of a fundamental shift in our understanding comparable to the leap forward that occurred in the Renaissance. This is a change of knowledge which reflects on our origins and on our basic concept of nature. It is of great importance to all human culture.

The Catalogue of the Universe is a collection and a portrait of the best known, the most unusual, the most remarkable and the most interesting of all that we know about, or at this moment, can know about in space. Each object is described in terms the layman can understand, each is illustrated with unique photographs, some prepared by a new technique that has never been used for a popular book before this. Many of these photographs are in brilliant color.

This is the only catalogue work available that gives us all a full picture of the nearly unimaginable universe that is now becoming a real and permanent feature of our understanding. It is an important new reference source and a highly original book, written for the layman by distinguished professional astronomers.

Here, Paul Murdin takes us on an original and breathtaking journey across the lifetime of the Universe, from the first milliseconds of the Big Bang right up to our present moment and even beyond. Murdin draws on the latest discoveries in astronomy to describe the most important characters and events in the life of our Universe: the most powerful explosions, the most curious planets, and the most spectacular celestial bodies. He charts our developing understanding of the cosmos, showing how thinkers have deduced profound truths from even the simplest observations – everyone can see that it is dark at night, but only recently have we understood this as proof that the Universe has not been the same forever. Since then, the Universe has grown up from childhood: astronomers have tracked it as it passed through maturity and as it now moves into middle age.

Murdin shows how our own lives were seeded from the Big Bang, galaxies, stars and planets. He considers some of the key questions: how did structures like galaxies and ourselves emerge from the dense maelstrom of the Universe’s birth? How did the ‘dark matter’ that we can’t even see speed up the development of galaxies, and how does ‘dark energy’ work to speed up the expansion of the Universe? Why hasn’t the Universe collapsed in on itself – and will it one day? And finally, he offers a glimpse into the future old age of our Universe, and what it means for us all.