Tired of exploring planet Earth? Have you ever imagined what it would be like to explore the Moon? Ever wonder about the topography of Mars? In this unique guidebook all of your extraterrestrial wanderlust can be fulfilled as Paul Hodge takes you on a virtual tour of the most spectacular sites in the Solar System. Hodge includes the latest information about the Solar System into his vivid descriptions of imaginary, challenging expeditions. Imagine: Descending into a fabulous canyon on Mars, one that dwarfs the Earth's Grand Canyon; Trekking up Venus' precipitous and scorching Mt. Maxwell; Journeying through the snows of Saturn's rings and the incredibly high, icy cliff of Miranda, the moon closest to Uranus. A compelling, extensively illustrated introduction to such otherworldly environments, Higher than Everest makes you believe that someday these adventures may actually take place. Paul Hodge is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Editor-in-Chief of the Astronomical Journal. Higher than Everest is based on a popular undergraduate course on the planets that he has taught for many years. Hodge's research has spanned from interplanetary dust to the extragalactic distance scale and currently includes star-formation and galactic evolution, using the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate nearby galaxies. He has written several books, most recently Meteorite Craters and Impact Structures of the Earth (Cambridge 1994).
Paul Hodge is an astronomer and author who has published 25 books, most on astronomy, but five on hiking and mountains. He is best known for his work on
the nature and contents of galaxies. His discoveries and analyses of nearby galaxies have provided new understanding of their histories and their origin. Using telescopes that have been among the largest in the world, he was the discover or co-discoverer and cataloger of more than 20, 000 objects in other galaxies, including ionized hydrogen clouds, star clusters, galaxies, dark nebulae and variable stars.
As a sideline Hodge did some pioneering research on the subject of interplanetary dust, carrying out his first experiments in the mid-1950's. While at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory he designed the first aircraft-borne meteoritic dust collector, which was flown on a U2 high-altitude airplane. In 2001 the asteroid 14466 was named "hodge" in his honor.
