Sir Brian, alongside Ward-Thompson and Metsaivanio, launched the book at an event in London's Notting Hill in mid-November, presenting a lecture on some of the galaxies featured in the book and projecting some of Metsaivanio's three-dimensional images.

"We did a book called Cosmic Clouds, which was bringing the clouds of dust and gas in our own galaxy to life," Sir Brian tells the BBC ahead of the launch. "And that's not something anyone can do except J-P… having done that, where do we go next? Well, we go outside the galaxy, we go to other galaxies, we look at all galaxies in the Universe, and we engaged one of the world's foremost experts in galactic evolution, who's sitting right beside you."

Ward-Thompson says with a chuckle: "I wouldn't go quite that far, but I have been studying them for 40 years. I did point out that one of the galaxies in the book was my PhD thesis, and I've been looking at it for 40 years.

"Part of the beauty of the book is that I'm able to tell the story of how our knowledge has evolved in the course of those 40 years," continues Ward-Thompson, who lectures on physics and astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, in the north of England. "One example, when I was a student, we were taught that we lived in what we call a 'normal' spiral galaxy, just like you're imagining now, with the spiral arms coming out from the centre."