The Cambridge Guide to the Solar System - Hardcover

Lang, Kenneth R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521813069 ISBN 13: 9780521813068

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2003

Synopsis

The Cambridge Guide to the Solar System provides a comprehensive, funamental, and up-to-date description of the solar system. It is written in a concise, light and uniform style, without being unnecessarily weighted down with specialized materials or the variable writing of multiple authors. It is filled with vital facts and information for astronomers of all types and for anyone with a scientific interest in the Earth, our Moon, all the other planets and their satellites, and related topics such as asteroids, comets, meteorites and meteors. The language, style, ideas and profuse illustrations will attract the general reader as well as professionals. A thorough report for general readers, it includes much compact reference data. Metaphors, similes and analogies will be of immense help to the lay person or non-science student, and they add to the enjoyment of the material. Vignettes containing historical, literary and even artistic material make this book unusual and interesting, and enhance its scientific content. Kenneth Lang is professor of astronomy in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Tufts University. He is the author of several astrophysics books, including The Sun from Space (Springer Verlag, 2000), Astrophysical Formulae: Radiation, Gas Processes, and High Energy Physics (Springer Verlag, 1999), Sun, Earth and Sky (Copernicus Books, 1997), Astrophysical Data: Planets and Stars (Springer Verlag, 1993), and Wanderers in Space: Exploration and Discovery in the Solar System (Cambridge, 1991),

About this title

About the Author

Professor Lang is an award-winning astronomy and planetary science writer, having published ten books which have been translated into seven languages.

Reviews

Libraries will find a use for this book both in the reference and in the circulating collections. The photographs are stunning, the numerous charts and graphs are exemplary, and the narrative is bulging with all the important information about the solar system that is available to date. The author has done a wonderful job of making many of the complicated scientific concepts accessible to the layperson. The language is challenging for students younger than high school, but many of the charts, graphs, maps, captions, sidebars, and introductions should be understandable to middle-school readers.

The beginning chapters are an overview of the field of space science, with emphasis on discoveries, discoverers, and tools. The major planets and the moon have their own chapters. Uranus and Neptune are treated in the same chapter, because they are so similar. Pluto has no chapter at all, because it is no longer considered a major planet. Chapters on comets, asteroids and meteorites, and colliding worlds end the narrative. The lengthy chapters follow the same layout, beginning with lists of important fundamental facts, histories of explorations and discoveries, and descriptions of the atmosphere, landforms, and moons. Each planet chapter ends with a summary diagram of the essential makeup of the planet. The numerous photographs are a balanced mixture of large black and white and color, most from NASA files. There are rich appendixes of books and Web sites and a good index.

Anyone with a need for information on the solar system should find fulfillment in the pages of this handsome work, and it is a beautiful browsing book. More current and less technical than Encyclopedia of the Solar System (Academic, 1998), it is recommended for high-school, public, and academic libraries.

RBB
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Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0521813069
• ISBN 13: 9780521813068
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 468