The Ultimate Planets

by Donald Goldsmith

Comes with CD-ROM. From the windswept plains of Mars to the ice-covered ocean of Europa, and outward bound to the mysterious Saturnian moon Titan, the host of objects in our solar system have been yielding-and soon will reveal still more-hidden secrets to the inquiring eyes of our orbiters, landers, and rovers. NASA's Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover proved a surprise media hit; the Mars Global Surveyor will produce a detailed map of the planet over a two-year period. In QPB The Ultimate Planets, these and other ongoing and future expeditions will be studied for clues to the origin of life, the existence of planets in other galaxies, and the beginnings of the universe itself.

Paperback

Published January 1, 1998

About the author

Donald Goldsmith is an astrophysicist, popular science author and screenwriter. He is the president of Interstellar Media. He is also the winner of the 1995 American Astronomical Society's Annenberg Foundation Award for Education and the Klumpke-Roberts Prize for his contributions to the public understanding of astronomy.

He received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969.He taught at Stony Brook University before becoming a full-time popularizer, and has written, co-written, or edited a number of popular science books.

His book "Origins," co-written with Neil Tyson, was the companion volume to the four-hour PBS series with the same title. Dr. Goldsmith worked on Carl Sagan's "COSMOS" series, and on Neil Tyson's series of the same name, and was the science editor and co-writer of the six-part PBS series "THE ASTRONOMERS." He has written many popular articles for journals such as Scientific American, Natural History, Discover, and Astronomy.