The Visible Universe (the book)

This spring, my co-author, Max Whitby, and I released The Visible Universe–the culmination of four years of work. Our goal was to create a coffee table-style book that not only had pretty pictures of all the deep-sky highlights, but told you how and when to capture each object. As an homage to the modern Messier catalog, we included 110 of the best deep-sky objects for imaging, showing multiple views of many of them with added charts that reveal the best time of year for each. Every image has the exact details of how it was captured, including the equipment, exposure times, dates, and processing software used. Further, we captured an image of the entire celestial sphere, allowing you to see where each object lies.

To accomplish this, we imaged from several locations–the UK, US, France, Australia, Chile, and Spain–over nearly three years. Between the individual object images and the all-sky image, we captured over 30,000 subexposures totaling over 2200 hours of exposure time. Processing spanned the three years of capture, plus several months for the all-sky image. Then we had to write and lay out the book!

We are proud to present this book to the world now, and we are already working on some new projects with the data. For those in the US, you can order it from Amazon (affiliate link: I get a few cents more if you buy through this link). Those outside the US can order it at https://www.thevisibleuniverse.com/. Below are some additional pictures to give you a sense of what’s inside.