Customer Reviews

The Orion Nebula: Where Stars Are Born

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I feel a bit disappointed because i was expecting a book devoted (and specialised) at the famous ORION NEBULA and instead of that i've read a book covering general astronomy knowledge. The final taste that this book left me is that of a fair, easy-to-read book, but away from the main subject.

This relatively short book covers a lot of material on astronomy and in a very understandable and thoroughly entertaining way. Mr. O'Dell, a noted scientist who played a big role in the development of the Hubble space telescope, does a beautiful job of blending the facts and history of astronomy into this fascinating tale of the Orion Nebula.

He covers some interesting history of astronomical observations and of the telescope, astrophotography and other detectors. He then goes into many details of the birth and evolution of stars from their initial gravitational collapse inside a molecular cloud to their achieving the nuclear fusion state and reaching hydrostatic equilibrium and then their long life on the main sequence. He also discuses some interesting objects such as brown dwarfs and rouge planets (star wantabes that didn't have the initial mass to ignite fusion). He has a very interesting coverage of the Hubble space telescope's history including the details of the infamous mirror problem and how it happened.

As he gets into the description of the Orion Nebula itself, he covers (and documents with beautiful pictures) many of the amazing features of this relatively nearby young stellar nursery. He discusses the dominant stars such as Theta1C, the numerous proplyds, the visible shock waves and the high speed particle jets emanating from the circumstellar disks.

A particularly thought provoking passage in this book was when Mr. O'Dell described what it would look like to an observer who was within the Orion Nebula Cluster - he painted a spectacular picture inside my mind!

In the latter chapters, he covers topics like planet formation, the possibility of life in the universe, and how scientist are more accurately refining some of the terms of famous Drake equation.

He concludes with a short description of the scientific process and how we have gained more and more understanding of our universe from the works of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein. As each added to our knowledge, sometimes we had to let go of older ideas. As Spencer Tracy said in the movie, Inherit the Wind, "Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. You can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. You may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline." As science reveals more answers to the origin of the universe, we sometimes have to abandon the simpler (and perhaps more confronting) explanations.

This is a book that will make you think, open your mind to the beauty of the cosmos, and appreciate the work of those giants on whose shoulders we stand as we gaze to the future and unravel the past of this amazing universe we inhabit.