About this product: I thought that since this DVD was produced by the ESA that it would be a thorough presentation of the development and observations of the great Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is certainly one of the greatest scientific instruments ever constructed, but this film does nothing to communicate that splendor. The film is over 2 hours of Bob Fosbury talking, rather few Hubble images flying across the screen, and a very pretentious, overblown electronic soundtrack. I was especially disappointed in the paucity of Hubble images. The telescope has been working hard for 15 years, there must be a huge library of significant images to show, but we only see a handful. Very unimpressive. The only interesting images were a few Hubble generated "movies" of nebulae actually changing over many separate observations - cosmic timelapse photography. Almost none of the images are shown statically, so you can get a good look at them. Most are actually skewed and distorted as they slide across and away from the viewer, like home video scene transitions - very frustrating. There are a lot of very simplistic, rather crude computer animations of the telescope that really add nothing to the film. Fosbury is not a very animated, interesting speaker. His presentation is dull, dull and dull. He actually has his hands in his pants pockets through one static monologue.
The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most expensive, complex and most important unmanned spacecraft yet constructed. I expected a more detailed and professionally produced film publication from one of the major partners. Don't waste your money on this one.
About this product: It looks like all that money NASA spent on the Hubble Space Telescope was worth it after all--at least from an aesthetic standpoint. Stargaze: Hubble's View of the Universe captivates the viewer with stunningly high-definition color images of galaxies, nebulae, and heavenly bodies closer to home. Each shot pans and lingers over the richly colored pictures as unobtrusive narration in English, French, German, or Spanish explains the history of the Hubble mission, its targets, and what we've learned so far. The music by 2002 is harmless and quiet, though viewers pathologically averse to New Age will scramble for the audio control. Including screensavers and Web features, Stargaze will keep spaceheads happy and entranced for hours, and convert the unbelievers. --Rob Lightner
The Universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine.
The Visible Universe presents a visual journey through space and back in time using the greatest optical instruments ever created in the history of man. The Hubble Space Telescope, SOHO, Trace, Spitzer, and other instruments have afforded us an insight to the farthest reaches of the Cosmos.
Carl Sagan
The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it.
The producer hopes that this progressive music video will entertain and inspire our children to further the progress of science and understanding of the universe we live in for our future, and posterity.
This program journeys through one hundred and forty four very hi-resolution images and videos. Additionally, two hundred and two images are presented with titles courtesy of NASA Space Telescope Science Institute, and countless others whose names appear within the credits. Thank you for the many years of inspiration. Both programs are featured with progressively mixed audio soundtracks.
Visual Journey 00:43:15 min
With various styles of professionally produced music, this program provides a hi-resolution visual journey to ends of what we understand as our visible universe. We will set forth with music through one hundred and forty images and videos using some of the greatest optical instruments yet devise.
Additional Scenes 00:26:15
With a more aggressive hard rock style of music, this program provides two hundred and two images presented with titles. Video of Mars Dust Devil and Comet 9P/Temple 1. courtesy of NASA.
This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
About this product: From the violence of exploding stars, colliding galaxies and the turbulent interstellar gases giving birth to new stars, emerges a sublime celestial beauty.
In its 17 years of exploring the heavens, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has snapped nearly 500,000 images of more than 25,000 celestial objects. The stunning collection of images on this program are some of the most beautiful, and will leave you in awe of the diverse and complex processes at work in the stars, galaxies and nebulae that make up the universe.
You may watch the program from an emotional and aesthetic standpoint or view subtitles explaining the images by pressing the 'subtitle' button on your DVD remote control. Subtitles are in English and Spanish.
Entertain and Relax - Inspire Conversation - Set the Mood - Bring Your Home To Life! -- Earth VideoWorks DVDs are 'the most creative new idea for entertaining to come along in quite some time.' They will transform your blank, black TV into a colorful, fascinating gallery of art - alive with music. Your TV will become an interesting, ambient background and a conversation piece while entertaining guests! All Earth VideoWorks DVDs are set for continuous play!
About this product: From the mysteries of our own solar system those that surround unexplored galaxies, history and science collide in this ambitious investigation of the Universe.
Questions about the Universe have consumed man since the dawn of time. In the 50 years since humans made their first tentative explorations of space, we have increased our knowledge of the cosmos dramatically, using powerful telescopes, robotic probes, and manned missions. But only recently has computer technology allowed scientists to illustrate in stunning detail their awe-inspiring conclusions. THE UNIVERSE, a groundbreaking series from THE HISTORY CHANNEL®, employs cutting-edge computer-generated imagery to bring distant planets and faraway stars up close, allowing viewers to gaze at black holes and comets, and witness the births and deaths of galaxies and solar systems.
This epic miniseries takes viewers on an exhilarating voyage through the cosmos. From the farthest reaches of distant galaxies back to the familiar face of our moon, THE UNIVERSE brings the mysteries of the heavens down to earth.
About this product: Stargaze II doesn't deviate much from the previous Stargaze DVD, and that's a good thing. Galaxies, nebulae, and other astronomical elements simply float across the screen in brilliant clarity, fueled by New Age music by Opus 27. The images are mostly from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with some unique mosaics from several sources. The bigger your screen, the better for "plasma art" that could serve as the background at a party or a valentine to any star freak. You can even view the program in high definition if you have the right media set-up. Sometimes the images float in front of a wallpaper of stars that causes a 3-D effect or looks kinda hokey, depending on your point of view. You can find out what you are looking at by activating subtitles or by clicking a menu button that goes to a page-by-page detail about the subject and how the image was rendered. With literally out-of-this-world colors and textures, the beauty of the heavens is glorious to behold. Produced the same year Congress debates the fate of the Hubble (2004), this program serves record of the extraordinary worlds that are seen only by this workhorse satellite. Lobbyists may have no better weapon to use than the Stargaze DVDs. --Doug Thomas
About this product: With the DVD release (on five discs) of this, the complete second season of The Universe, the History Channel has now devoted a combined total of more than 25 hours, not including bonus material, to its documentary study of that combination of time, space, and matter that we call our universe. That’s a lot. But then you consider the mind-boggling age and size of the universe itself: 13.7 billion years old, and big beyond our comprehension; infinite, in fact, and expanding rapidly. By those measures, it’s apparent that this fascinating series could probably air for longer than The Simpsons and Gunsmoke (the two longest running shows in TV history) put together and still not run out of things to talk about.
The 18 episodes from Season Two cover an appropriately wide range of topics, from "Cosmic Holes" to "Cosmic Collisions," from supernovas to gravity. There are episodes about the weather in space, the largest objects in space (hint: they’re really, really big, like the so-called "cosmic web" of galaxies, which is a hundred million billion times bigger than Earth), and traveling to and colonizing space. The amount of information and data provided is enormous. Jargon abounds, including terms like "lunar transient phenomena," "pulsar planets," "hot Jupiters," "dark matter" and "dark energy," "collisional families," the "heavy bombardment period," and many, many more. And the numbers are mind-boggling: for instance, it’s estimated that the impact of the asteroid that landed on the Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, was equal to that of dropping a Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb every second for 140 years! Still, some may find the episodes that involve informed speculation more interesting than those that deal in facts. We know that the Moon affects ocean tides, but does it also have an effect on human behavior? If the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what came before it? Instead of using rockets to go to space, can scientists actually build a "space elevator" that will reach from an orbiting satellite some 60 thousand miles down to Earth? All of this is delivered by way of very convincing computer-generated imagery and other effects, along with dozens of interviews with astronomers and other experts, photos, film footage, and so on. Best of all, while it can get a bit dense, technically speaking, by and large The Universe will be readily accessible to most viewers. --Sam Graham
About this product: 1 DVD collection of material on the 108th Space Shuttle mission, servicing the Hubble space telescope. Contains an original documentary on the mission, multiple views of launch and extensive material from the mission.
About this product: As a primer on up-to-date scientific theory about the nature of the universe and our place in it, Cosmic Voyage is visually sumptuous and just plain fun. Shot in the mind-blowing IMAX process, this combined live-action and computer-generated production has (even in video format) an immensity of scope befitting its grand subject. Beginning, lyrically if unexpectedly, in Italy's magnificent Venice, Cosmic Voyage draws inspiration from airborne perspectives on the city's famed network of canals and streets, leading to further appreciations of dense systems in nature. From the subnuclear to the physical limits of the known universe, Cosmic Voyage explores a resonance between all things while making sense of such inscrutable phenomena as the birth of stars and planets, black holes, supernovas, etc. The marvels of cosmology are rarely so accessible as this. --Tom Keogh
About this product: At the beginning of the century, discoveries about the hidden workings of the everyday world suggest all is not as it seems. Quantum theory, relativity, nuclear power, and clues about the birth and death of the universe have rocked our deepest beliefs. Mysteries of the Universe journeys from the subatomic world of the atom to the farthest reaches of space and time, and into the laboratories of the men and women whose work has forever altered physics and astronomy.
Highlights include: George Ellery Hale and the Mount Wilson telescope. Henrietta Leavitt. Edwin Hubble. Albert Einstein. Niels Bohr and the Quantum Theory of Matter. The structure of the atom. Jocelyn Bell and pulsars. The size of the universe. The Big Bang. Black holes. Quarks. Super colliders. Unified field and string theories.
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