A 2025 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming the
universe right before our eyes—and here for the first time is the inside account of how the
mission originated how it performs its miracles of science and what its revolutionary images
are revealing. Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific
achievements in the history of civilization a $10 billion instrument with a staggeringly
ambitious goal: unlocking the secrets of the cosmos. Award-winning science writer Richard Panek
stands us shoulder to shoulder with senior scientists as they conceive the mission meet
decades-long challenges to bring it to fruition and now use its unprecedented technology to
yield new discoveries about the origins of our solar system to search for life on planets
around other suns and to trace the growth of hundreds of billions of galaxies all the way back
to the birth of the first stars. The Webb telescope has captured the world’s imagination and
Pillars of Creation shows how and why—including through sixteen pages of awe-inspiring
full-color photos. At once a testament to human ingenuity and a celebration of mankind’s
biggest leap yet into the cosmos Panek’s eye-opening book reveals our universe as we’ve never
seen it before—through the lens of the James Webb Space Telescope a marvel that is itself a
pillar of creation.
