Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime

Description

The vivid, dramatic images of distant stars and galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have come to define how we visualize the cosmos. In their immediacy and vibrancy, photographs from the Hubble show what future generations of space travellers might see should they venture beyond our solar system. In Picturing the Cosmos, Elizabeth A. Kessler examines the Hubble's deep space images, highlighting the remarkable resemblance they bear to nineteenth-century paintings and photographs of the American West and their invocation of the visual language of the sublime.

Elizabeth A. Kessler teaches art history at Stanford University.

"Picturing the Cosmos has helped me better understand what it is that fascinates me about the astronomical universe. Even though I've always loved to look directly at the night sky or at the wonders it holds with telescopes of many sizes and powers, reading here that 'astronomy is about the pleasure of looking' has revitalized this old habit and given it weight." -David H. DeVorkin, Senior Curator, Division of Space History, National Air and Space Museum "This masterful book provides the authoritative account of why these images look the way they do and, more broadly, how human beings manage to represent the vastness of the cosmos to themselves." -W. J. T. Mitchell, author of Cloning Terror and Seeing through Race