Customer Reviews

Neptune: The Planet, Rings, and Satellites

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Neptune is the eighth planet in the solar system, the last gas giant and the last planet of any real size. Due to its great distance from the sun, everything that we knew about this planet, until Voyager 2 visited it in 1989, was determined by telescopic observation. In this book, the authors, who both worked on the Voyager science team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, summarize the discoveries made by the spacecraft, the spacecraft's design and the discoveries made by telescopic observations. As with all the books published in the Springer-Praxis, Astronomy and Space Sciences series, there are numerous high quality photographs, line drawings and graphs in this book. Other than a few children's books, I believe that this is the only text, which covers Neptune in any detail.

The first quarter of the books examines the pre-Voyager findings from Galileo's possible sighting, to its modern discovery that was determined by mathematical methods and its possible origins. The next portion of the book, which is also approximately one quarter of the book, covers the development of the Voyager probes and their subsequent discoveries at Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus (Voyager 2 only). The remainder of the book focuses on the Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune in 1989 from the long-range pre-encounter observations to the post encounters studies. In this large section of the book there are discussions on everything from, rings and satellite discoveries, radio science, the moons, the moon Triton and its atmosphere, cloud structure and much more.

A few final thoughts. First, if you don't have a great summary the Voyager mission, this book definitely provides it. Secondly, even though I have a technical background, I found some sections, especially the chapter of the magnetic fields a bit too technical. With that said, this book is definitive text about the planet Neptune.

Neptune, the 8th planet in our Solar System. I won't say there are little books write on a single planet, however, books which write simply on Neptune, you can count. Apart from the technical masterpiece "Neptune and Triton" published by Arizona University Press, this Praxis publication is the best book on Neptune ever had.

I remembered when this book was first published, I bought it immediately. Firstly, it is because this is one in the excellent Springer-Praxis book series, I always love the books published by Praxis. Secondly, "Neptune" is a special book, in early years; Miner also published a very good book "Uranus" for Praxis. Therefore, I didn't think buy bought a copy of "Neptune".

When I not yet started my reading, and found that only the second half of book talk about Neptunian atmosphere, interior, ring etc, but used the first half to talk about the Voyagers and the pre-Neptune discoveries, I thought that that it was traveling out of scope.

However, when I started my reading, it is not the case.

Miner was one of scientists in-charging the Voyager mission to Neptune, his personally experience cannot be replaced by others. His writings are to point, no dummy words, everything he wrote are related to the Neptune findings. Even for those he mentioned for the Voyager findings on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, are all concise and it's important for the story of Neptune discoveries. It is totally different from my first impression.

More, Miner described the history of Neptune, the telescopic understanding of Neptune before Voyager; the story of Voyager, its beginning, preparation for the Neptune encounter, the detail sequence of events during the encounter as well as the in-depth Neptune sciences. From his firsthand experience, you can see how NASA's daily operation, and the details of Voyager mission, these are already worthwhile for the book.

The only weakness of this book is the coverage of Triton is too little. Since Triton is a very important moon in the solar system, persaonlly I think there should be a whole chapter dedicated for Triton.

This book is a great reading for those who love space exploration and the Solar System. This book is not too difficult nor too easy, so I suggest this book to those who have basic knowledge of the Solar System and planetary exploration.

I highly recommend this book!

It is a technical term "non-expert audience." The editorial description of this book says that such is its target audience. A non-expert audience means that the intended reader does not have much -- perhaps next-to-no knowledge of the subject matter; HOWEVER, that same intended reader is used to going into depth and has similar or at least somewhat close level of expertise in some totally different area to what the author possesses about his/her subject. In short, one could say a "non-expert audience" reader is one who is very well educated, not afraid of depth and details, can concentrate well, but just so happens to know nothing of the subject matter he/she is about to read. Scientific American articles of the 70's and 80's are superb examples of writing to the "non-expert audience".

That being said, are you one who likes or hates concentrated reading? That can have a bearing on whether you should get this book.

However, if you are searching for a big compendium of facts -- in tables in many cases, this book would serve that one purpose admirably.

Do you want to know details of how Voyager accomplished what it did? Be careful what you wish for: this book has much on that topic. (But so does Burgess' book on Neptune.)

The book has much about Voyager's experiences and results at Jupiter. A very nice bonus. Jupiter is not at all covered skimpily. In fact, the book's title is nearly inaccurate as perhaps 40% of the book is about Jupiter and it's moons.

For the scientific methodology / teamwork interested person there is plenty of that. What I found intriguing was how they discovered that a cause of blur in Neptune pictures was the starting and stopping of the digital tape recorder reels (needed due to low bit-rate required of the faint [how faint: seeing a penlight flashlight on Earth while standing on the moon!] signal from as far away as Neptune). The tape recorder reel starting and braking would torque the Voyager spacecraft! (A command was sent to fire thruster a few milliseconds every time recorder would start or stop.)

If all you want is pictures, there are good ones, but better you get Burgess' book -- or Seymour Simon's children series -- or Asimov's series if all you want are pictures.

For this book, you have to enjoy either lots of details -- content details and/or methodology details -- or having tabulations of facts (such as for all the Jupiter and Neptune moons). If neither of these appeals to you but you want more than a childrens book, get the Burgess book "Far Encounter".