The Cambridge Guide to the Solar System

by Kenneth R. Lang, Unknown Author

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 Radiation, Gas Processes, and High Energy Physics (Springer Verlag, 1999), Sun, Earth and Sky (Copernicus Books, 1997), Astrophysical Planets and Stars (Springer Verlag, 1993), and Wanderers in Exploration and Discovery in the Solar System (Cambridge, 1991),

Genres: Astronomy, Reference, Science, Nonfiction, Space

Hardcover

First published October 6, 2003

Reviews

[Aprilleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book, with enough information jammed inside it’s substantial volume to induce headaches if you try to read through it like a standard nonfiction book. It’s well organized, with sections for each of the major planets (sorry Pluto, but if it makes you feel better Uranus and Neptune had to share a section), as well as coverage of the Moon, comets, asteroids and meteors, as well as the solar system in general and impact events. There’s no coverage of the Sun, which may seem odd until you realize there’s a separate volume just for our central star (The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Sun). Within each chapter, the material is broken up into 4-10 sections, and the beginning of each chapter has a couple pages of one-sentence summaries of the material to be covered. Within the limitations of the coverage (you’d need the companion volume about the Sun) this would make a decent textbook for solar system astronomy (or a great companion to a more traditional textbook).

The coverage is pretty impressive, although densely written. He doesn’t shy away from the mathematical underpinnings the way many authors of astronomy books tend to do, but for the most part the math is not the main focus. I think you could skim over those sections and not lose much, but I’m still pleased that it was included (brings back memories of taking astronomy in college). The illustrations are plentiful, but not to the point of overwhelming the text or displacing it. In many cases, the illustrations are critical to understanding the subject being covered on that page.

Among the topics that I found interesting were a rather long section on Earth’s atmosphere and global warming (a more extensive treatment than I would have expected in an astronomy book), some information about the Moon that I hadn’t known already, a lot more detail about the Galilean Moons than I’ve ever seen before, and an interesting tidbit about the Tunguska explosion that reminded me of a fiction book I read not that long ago that took some liberties with the explanation of that phenomenon.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice reference, well organized and thorough. This is interesting to browse and handy when some topic comes up - we were watching a Science Channel documentary that mentioned the Kuiper Belt, wanted to know more detail than the show provided, so out came this book and there it was. Plenty of good illustrations, a good index, and appendices listing further reading and useful Web sites. This will be helpful for explaining things to our grandkids when they get a couple of years older, too.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great refernce for all the planets and other features of our solar system.Tonnes of inforamtion for anybody interested in the planets and our solar system. There is quite a lot of inforamtion but for those who are really interested and looking for an up to date book about the planets to satify their hunger for knowledge on the solar system then I reccomend this book for you.