Customer Reviews

The New Solar System: Ice Worlds, Moons, and Planets Redefined

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Having been raised on Time-Life Books' _The Planets_, it was a pleasant surprise to find a worthy successor to the astronomy text I loved as a child.

And there is much to like in National Geographic's _The New Solar System_:

* For the masses of nonscientists, yet retaining facts and educational merit
* Great attention to photos, illustrations, and graphic layout, counterbalanced by text that is easy to read and process
* Up to date, featuring the latest info on space exploration and new discoveries within our solar system and just beyond
* A methodical outline of the journey from sun to Oort Cloud that never lags for interest
* A long chapter devoted to plutoids and Kuiper Belt objects
* An excellent overview of changing theories within astronomy and why the field is still in flux
* A fine cultivation of the sense of mystery and awe that confront modern astronomers and cosmologists
* Countless interesting facts about how astronomers make new discoveries
* Short biographic sidebars on astronomers whose names may not be household but who made significant contributions to the field

The only flaw, and it's a small one, is that the author occasionally "breaks the plane" through clichéd or overly familiar wordings.

_The New Solar System_ is the kind of popular science book that any family would be blessed to own. At this price, it's a tremendous value and will bring joy for years to come.

Great for the coffee table, great for kids and just as great for reflection and thought!

Yes, you won't find any cutting edge data or new theories here but that doesn't matter. With the 160 photos showing every step between here and the edge of the solar system, this is a book where the picture -- litterally -- tells the story.

And what a story it is...

It's hard to believe that we've only had space flight for the past fifty years to think that now we can say we've dispatched exploratory craft throughout the inner planets of the solar system and we've managed a landing as far out as Titan...the largest moon of Saturn.

Though you can read this book sequentially, I think it's one of those ones best left for "grazing" where you attack the chapters by order of interest.

Visit the Moon this week. Next week go to Jupiter.

In ending inserts the book even speculates on extra solar planets and life outside the solar system. Interestingly enough, the two fields are actually related.

As covered in this book, there's an excellent equation developed by astromer Frank Drake back in the early 1960s which attempted to quantify the ubiquity of life in the universe. As a series of questions it asked how many suns were out there, how many would have planets like our Earth, how many of those planets would give rise to life and of those how many would see intelligent life and how long would those intelligent civilizations last.

In that last particular, we here on Earth are running an experiment. The longer humanity can endure against its own ingnorance the better prospects are finding intelligent life elsewhere.

This is a great book, highly recommended and a work that litterally makes you see the sky in whole new way.

While Patricia Daniels' summary of recent solar system data is neither perfect nor incredibly detailed, which may irk some physicists and astronomers, for the educated layman, it is still one of the best overviews among the current crop of similar publications. There is a considerable amount of information to consider and she does so in a well-organized, easy-to-understand fashion that includes good artwork and some excellent photographs. The author runs through the creation of the solar system, has a pretty good section on the sun, then deals with the inner terrestrial planets, including the Moon, discusses the asteroid belt, then moves to the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), their largest moons, the "ice giants" (Uranus and Neptune) and their major moons, and finally covers the so-called "plutoids" before rounding out the discussion with interesting sections on the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud before concluding with exoplanets and similar considerations. A table at the end of the book summarizes the salient info, which may prove handy for quick reference. While detailed information is somewhat lacking, making one yearn for a more in-depth analysis of several of the subjects that are raised, one can certainly use this book to easily reference the fundamental information currently available.
That said, there are some "mistakes" in the book (for instance, the author often refers to "Kelvins" rather than degrees Kelvin) and there is a reference to the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change which I find inappropriate in the context of such a large-scale, physical discussion of the solar system. I also don't appreciate references to producers of relatively recent sci-fi movies or her touting the memory of Carl Sagan while neglecting such classic works as Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles or some of the books by Isaac Asimov. Such minor matters aside, however, this offering from National Geographic holds up well, especially when compared to even more recent summaries of solar system and space info that are fat, glitzy, expensive, and really not significantly better. Of course, it shouldn't be the only book you have on the subject, but there is little doubt you will find this one useful to reference again and again.
After his retirement from the Aerospace industry, my father (a nuclear and space physicist) worked doggedly for twenty years on a detailed compendium of similar subject matter. Unfortunately, he was never completely satisfied with the job he was doing and he died before he could finish the task. Keeping that in mind, while Daniels' book won't compare to an in-depth analysis written by an accomplished scientist in the field, it is nevertheless a pretty good effort and the author should be commended for it.

Daniels begins with a brief history of both our solar system and humans' efforts to study and understand it. She points out that this learning process has gone through three stages: 1)Use of the naked eye. 2)Use of telescopes. 3)Use of satellites.

Our solar system is over 4.5 billion years old. As the 20th century opened, studying the solar system was a backwater shunned by ambitious astronomers who preferred probing far-away stars, nebulae, and galaxies. Amateur astronomer Clyde Tombaugh got the Pluto-hunting job because he was cheaper to hire than a 'real' astronomer.

Our solar system abruptly came back into priority in 1957 when the Soviets launched a 184 lb. satellite into Earth orbit. Since then our moon, then Venus and Mars were visited close-up or in person. In 2015 a NASA spacecraft will start imaging Pluto. In the between years we've found water on Mars, rings around every gas giant planet, and erupting volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io. The sun's immense magnetic energies have also been charted. Today's information now comes from streams of data analyzed by powerful computers.

Author Daniels then takes readers through a focus on our sun - our early understandings of it, its anticipated growth and eventually swallowing Earth, composition (mostly hydrogen - 71%, and helium - 27%), origins about 5 billion years ago (now about half through its expected life cycle), temperatures, size, layers, emissions (light, neutrinos, radiation, solar wind, etc.).

Then it's on to the various planets and finally a brief consideration of "Are We Alone?"

If you were expecting National Geographic-style glossy pics, forget it. The graphics are supposed to be innovative but they are just annoying. Daniels writes well but there were nonsensical statements, scientific inanities, on every page - pity the editorial process missed them; if you know any physics, you'll find it infuriating.