Moons: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #450

by David A. Rothery

Proving to be both varied and fascinating, moons are far more common than planets in our Solar System. Our own Moon has had a profound influence on Earth, not only through tidal effects, but even on the behaviour of some marine animals. Many remarkable things have been discovered about the moons of the giant outer planets from Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, and other spacecraft. Scientists have glimpsed volcanic activity on Io, found oceans of water on Titan, and captured photos of icy geysers bursting from Enceladus. It looks likely that microbial life beyond the Earth may be discovered on a moon rather than a planet.

In this Very Short Introduction David Rothery introduces the reader to the moons of our Solar System, beginning with the early discoveries of Galileo and others, describing their variety of mostly mythological names, and the early use of Jupiter's moons to establish position at sea and to estimate the speed of light. Rothery discusses the structure, formation, and influence of our Moon, and those of the other planets, and ends with the recent discovery of moons orbiting asteroids, whilst looking forward to the possibility of finding moons of exoplanets in planetary systems far beyond our own.


ABOUT THE SERIES:
The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Astronomy, Space, Popular Science

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2015

About the author

David Rothery is Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the School of Physical Sciences within the Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics at the Open University.

Reviews

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introductions is a useful series. Obviously specialists in a topic won’t need them, but nobody’s a specialist in everything. Although not an astronomer, I’ve blogged about the moon from time to time (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World), since I’ve read a number of books about it. This one’s a bit different in that it discusses not only our moon, butt the moons of other bodies in our solar system. It turns out there are a lot.

Back during my last astronomy class many of the bodies discovered by space telescopes and probes to the other planets hadn’t yet reached their goals. Of course Pluto was still a planet then. It turns out that the gas giants have many satellites each. Rings are common and are often accompanied by moons. Even some asteroids have moons. This little book gives a lot of information despite its compact size.

David Rothery doesn’t neglect our moon, however. A couple chapters are dedicated to it as well. There are many questions about it still, including that hubristically human one of who owns the moon. We seem to think anything we can reach is something we can buy. The moon has been a source of wonder from our earliest days. It’s well worth taking a few minutes to learn more about it.

[Iguś · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mega ciekawe, ale jednak spodziewałam się czegoś nieco bardziej popularnonaukowego, a tu niektóre fragmenty brzmiały jak wyjęte z wikipedii (czytanie po angielsku nie ułatwiało sprawy). Jak ktoś jest nastawiony typowo na wiedzę, a nie na doznania literackie to się nie zawiedzie:))

[Matthew Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers, briefly, many of the moons in our solar system and all the different types of moon and moon-like objects in the solar system. To be honest, I was mostly only interested in the Moon, but it was pretty cool to learn about the others, especially Neptune's moon Triton. I wish a clearer definition of what is meant by a moon had been given early on in the book, but over its course I did get the sense that it is essentially any object primarily orbiting another object that is not the Sun. A good overview that I think was still a little beyond me in places, but covered a lot of material.

[Jon Jacobs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a delightful mix of basic information about moons, the sort of stuff you should know but don't, and what is, by my standards, obscure information about various moons in our solar system.

[Neal Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book because I wanted an overview of the moons of the gas giant planets, mostly Io, Europa (moons of Jupiter) and Titan (of Saturn). In particular I wanted a scientific opinion on more detailed published descriptions, and the book did that for me. The text is clear and evocative and there are plenty of photographs and diagrams.

You get what you pay for here. Some of the figures, e.g. the one of the internal structures of Jupiter's four biggest moons, aren't completely self-explanatory because there is no key, just a text description which doesn't completely match up with the detail of the figure. Overall, only one of the figures was made specifically for the book.

Likewise, I assume that the text has drawn on the author's previous publications, and the chunks don't always match up well. For example, in relation to the difficulty of estimating the ages of Ganymede's craters, the author says “if you plot the distribution of crater frequency versus crater size for Ganymede, it looks very different to the equivalent plot for the Moon.” I would've liked to see the plots, although I realise you can't show everything in a “very short” book. But, if the concept is mentioned for Ganymede, I think it should've been mentioned earlier for the Moon. Likewise, there's a theme of volcanic activity on moons. Our Moon obviously doesn't have any now, but I didn't know whether it still has a hot or even molten core. I couldn't find this information in the book (but the answer's yes).

Some concepts would be a lot clearer with an illustration. For example, I wasn't aware of “Trojan moons”, which have come to rest at a Lagrange point, i.e. a kind of equilibrium where the gravitational pulls of two or more larger bodies cancel out, a bit like debris gathering in the Sargasso Sea, in the middle of the North Atlantic gyre (current cycle).

Overall, a good read, just a bit of a patchwork.

[Lalit Singh Tomar · Rating 3 out of 5]

So the story of Moons ...... no only the story of our moon but all possible moons of the universe ... The story begins with obviously with our own moon. So very wonderful fact were told,like possibility water at the poles. The footprints of 1969-72 Apollo mission still visible etc.
Next chapters deals with the other moons of solar system. Information and fact mainly deducted for the various explorer mission like Voyager 1&2 , Cassini-huygen , Gelileo etc....
but after chapter six I found the book bit boring as it started flooding in more and more boring data but less facts and explanation.

But overall it was great to know so much about the MOONS

[Steve Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another satisfying and educational read from the Very Short Introductions series. Mr Rothery's style is approachable, informative and easy to read - it's not a slog like many such reads can be. It's a pity the section on exomoons is so small, but as we hadn't found any at time of publication that can be forgiven!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Enjoyed the brief forays into classical mythology etc when discussing the naming of the moons alongside the scientific explanations for their various features.

[Janessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok

Very informative; definitely not in layman’s terms as much as I would have enjoyed. Still, an ok read from which I learned quite a bit.

[C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information, biased author.