Astronomy Demystified (Demystified) 1st edition by Gibilisco, Stan (2002) Paperback

by Stan Gibilisco

Brand New. Will be shipped from US.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Physics, Astronomy, Reference

Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

Reviews

[Stasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad course, but maybe just a bit overly wordy in sections? That's coming from someone who has been looking at a Physics text book A LOT lately though, ha.

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stan Gibilisco does it again with Astronomy Demystified. It is a primer on astronomy and covers everything you need to know. There is an impressive breadth of knowledge in the book.

Gibilisco begins by talking about how we map stars and other celestial objects. I wondered about this process since the Earth is a sphere along with its surroundings.

The book is heavy on science but does not rely too heavily on jargon. It describes what we know about the universe and how we obtained that knowledge. For example, it discusses the various theories concerning Solar System formation. Furthermore, it describes the different types of telescopes and methods used to examine the stars.

The book is older, with a 2003 publication date, so Pluto is still included in the planets. The book has a little imaginary sequence that describes a trip to the surfaces of Venus and Mars. There is a scene depicting an extraterrestrial civilization mapping the Earth, as well.

The book’s final chapter has advice for buying a telescope and what specifications to look for in the instrument.

I enjoyed the book. Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of all the basic astronomy books I’ve read – and that’s at least a handful – this is by far the worst. I hope author Stan Gibilisco is better at writing electronics texts than he is at astronomy, because at least in this realm his work is disorganized, frequently condescending and occasionally downright inaccurate. I intended to use this work as a quick refresher before moving on to some more specific astronomy books, but by the end I was more annoyed than enlightened. Even the graphics are bad; there isn’t a single photo in the whole thing (a serious minus in an astronomy book), and almost all the illustrations look like they were thrown together in five minutes or less using an outdated copy of CorelDraw. People who find that they don’t get much from the intro books written by Levy, North, Hathaway and the like could conceivably find this scatter-brained mix of math, trivia and poorly-written sci fi to their taste. But for everyone else, seek elsewhere for a door into this fascinating field.

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book thinking it will be as informative as Design Patterns from the Head First series. I guess I should have known better than to expect the same standards of two books from different collections.

This isn't really a particularly good book. A lot of the information here were either out of date, nothing new, or inaccurate (particularly when it comes to numbers). But it is helpful in the sense that it organizes one's knowledge of astronomy. I'll give it a 3, and not a 1 or 2, because there were some things in this book that I didn't know before, or I didn't know I knew (if that makes any sense), but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.