David J. Eicher

The cosmic clouds of dust and gas that populate the heavens, known as Nebulae, hit the headlines with the release of the famous image of the Pillars of Creation, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. But the night sky contains thousands of other glorious nebulae, in an infinite variety of colours and shapes. This is the first book ever to present nebulae in 3-D, revealing the science behind the beautiful pictures that hang in our galactic art gallery. The story is compelling: all the elements that constitute our world, and build our human bodies, were made in the stars, and stars are born, die and are recycled in nebulae. So the tale of the birth and death of stars and the creation of elements is part of our own human story. As Joni Mitchell famously sang: We are stardust. When he's not touring with his band Queen, Brian May is a PhD astrophysicist actively engaged with several current NASA and JAXA missions. Here he joins forces again with David J. Eicher, the editor of Astronomy magazine, to share the extraordinary world of nebulae with anyone who is curious about the cosmos.

In 1961 John F. Kennedy surprised the world with his declaration that America would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. In 1969 this seemingly impossible goal was achieved as Neil Armstrong uttered his immortal line: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind." This book celebrates not only 50 years since the first human steps on the Moon, but the achievements of the all Soviet and American heroes who risked and sometimes lost their lives in the race to the Moon. The race began with Sputnik 1 in 1957, and it was the Soviet Union that stole the limelight during the first few years of the 1960s, as they achieved not only the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, but the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, and then the first spacewalk, performed by Alexei Leonov in 1965. Then, as a series of Apollo successes took the lead in the race, the Soviet manned Moon program slowed and ceased altogether. The Apollo program continued as far as Apollo 17, but ultimately was itself wound down. The early 1970s saw a period of burgeoning collaboration between East and West with the evolution of space stations, and this continues today with the extraordinary success of the International Space Station. Mission Moon 3-D not only sees David J. Eicher and Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May creating a stunningly illustrated book in their field of expertise and passion, but amazingly it includes contributions from Apollo 16 moonwalker Charlie Duke, and Jim Lovell, immortalised as the Commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. The book features spectacular unseen 3-D images carefully constructed from the astronauts own photographs by Brian May, and the book includes a free viewer designed by Brian. As Charlie Duke says in his Foreword: "The three-dimensional views of the lunar surface that Brian and his team have created are amazing, and give a good approximation of what it's like to really be there."