Cassini at Saturn: Huygens Results (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration) [Paperback]

David M. Harland (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 038726129X | ISBN-13: 978-0387261294 | Publication Date: February 6, 2010 | Edition: 1

*Brings the story of the Cassini-Huygens mission and their joint exploration of the Saturnian system right up to date. *Combines a review of previous knowledge of Saturn, its rings and moons, including Titan, with new spacecraft results in one handy volume. *Provides the latest and most spectacular images, which will never have appeared before in book form. *Gives a context to enable the reader to more easily appreciate the stream of discoveries that will be made by the Cassini-Huygens mission. *Tells the exciting story of the Huygens spacecraft’s journey to the surface of Titan.  

Editorial Reviews

Review

Aus den Rezensionen: "… Das Werk von David M. Harland, der für seine präzisen und detaillierten Beschreibungen von bemannten und unbemannten Raumfahrtprojekten bekannt ist, erzählt die Geschichte der Saturnforschung. … Eine ausführliche Bibliographie, Tabellen und eine Liste weiterführender Literatur runden das Werk ab. … Das Buch ist flüssig und leichtverständlich geschrieben und erlaubt einen detaillierten Einblick in die Geschichte der Saturnforschung. … das Buch … gibt dem Leser eine gute Einführung in die Geschichte der Saturnforschung. Für Fans der Planetenforschung ist es ein Muss." (TILMANN ALTHAUS, in: Sterne und Weltraum, 2007, Issue 8, S. 104 f.)

From the Back Cover

Cassini At Saturn – Huygens Results brings the story of the Cassini-Huygens mission and their joint exploration of the Saturnian system right up to date. Cassini entered orbit around Saturn June 2004 so this update includes 8 months of scientific data available for review, including the most spectacular images of Saturn, its rings and satellites ever obtained by a space mission. As the Cassini spacecraft approached its destination in spring 2004, the quality of the images already being returned by the spacecraft clearly demonstrated the spectacular nature of the close-range views that will be obtained. The book contains a 16-page colour section, comprising a carefully chosen selection of the most stunning images to be released during the spacecraft’s initial period of operation. The Huygens craft, released by Cassini, parachuted through the clouds of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in January 2005. David Harland tells the exciting story of the this craft’s journey to the surface of one of the most enigmatic bodies on the Solar System, the only moon to have a dense atmosphere and possibly lakes of liquid gas at -190ºC on its surface. Titan is considered to be an early Earth in deep freeze, possibly with the building blocks of life in its atmosphere. There will undoubtedly be enormous interest in the first results and images of Titan’s surface, and this book is the first incisive summary of this groundbreaking material.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Praxis; 1 edition (February 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038726129X
• ISBN-13: 978-0387261294
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,485,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not for the average reader, August 12, 2007

By 

Vahagn Karapetyan "The King" (Burbank, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cassini at Saturn: Huygens Results (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration) (Paperback)

It may be true that this book contains a lot of information about Saturn and its moons and all the other findings in the outer solar system, however, the writing style is quite complicated for someone that isn't thoroughly experienced in the field of astronomy.

The writing style is extremely technical and overly detailed. For example, there are several sections in the book where the author describes each specific part on the space probe that NASA has built using highly technical terms that only a veteran astronomer or NASA scientist would be familiar with. The average reader will get lost quite fast in all the technical explanations and get quite frustrated. Here is a typical example of the style of writing that the author uses:

"The Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) did not have a lens, it had a series of linear apertures set in line which served as a collimator to produce a field of view 2 by 15 milliradians, then a diffraction grating illuminated a linear array of 128 detectors, each of which measured the brightness on a 1024 point scale to measure the range of 50-170 nanometers in a spectral resolution of 1 nanometre. It was to investigate ultraviolet glows in interplanetary space and in ionospheres, and use limb sounding measurements of the extent to which insolation was absorbed during solar occultations to profile the chemical composition of the upper regions of planetary atmospheres...."

If you can figure out such details then this book is for you. He uses this kind of writing throughout the majority of the book and it gets quite frustrating to try to decipher all the technical jargon.

Furthermore, the author fails to focus on perhaps the most important part of the subject matter, the planets and the moons themselves. He spends so much time going into every little detail of how NASA actually sends its probes to their locations that you get lost trying to figure out what he was trying to explain to begin with. He constantly uses terms only familiar to physics and chemistry majors.

If you are looking for a more amateur-friendly book about astronomy then I recommend checking out David Grinspoon. His writing is a lot less technical and he focuses on the important big picture instead of letting his readers get lost in all the insignificant details that are only important to a scientist, not an amateur astronomy enthusiast.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Update, June 5, 2007

By 

Ralph Lorenz (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cassini at Saturn: Huygens Results (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration) (Paperback)

This is a new edition of Harland's fine 'Mission to Saturn', adding
100 new pages of Cassini findings through summer 2006, including of
course the results of the Huygens encounter at Titan. As usual, a
handy, comprehensive volume, nicely written and illustrated. (There is no point in buying Mission to Saturn now, since its contents
are included in CaS:HR)