Customer Reviews

Planet Quest: The Epic Discovery of Alien Solar Systems

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4 star:		(4)
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Ken Croswell's book, "Planet Quest" is a must for anyone interested in the search for planets outside of the solar system. The book reads well, telling a fascinating story from the beginnings of speculation about the existence of alien worlds right up to the present when information is coming to us all the time about strange new worlds around distant stars. Anybody with an interest in the possibilities of life elsewhere must read this book.

Planet Quest is a great book for all you armchair astronomers who want to learn more! I am not an astronomer or even an amateur astronomer, in fact, Planet Quest is only the Third book I've read on the subject but my interest is growing. Planet Quest is very easy to understand because all of the scientific jargon is followed by words and explanations that beginners, like you and me, can follow. Read this book, you won't be disappointed!

Before reading "Planet Quest", I was completely ignorant on this subject; I just assumed that someone found the planets sometime ago and that'd be good enough for me. That is no longer the case after going through the pages of "Planet Quest". With a clear, simple style of writing, the author offered readers like me wonderful insights into the thrilling process of hunting for a new planet. This is a non-fiction work, but I felt captivated as if reading Jules Verne novels! When following the stories of planet hunters with their glories and their defeats, I could conclude that life is much better than fiction. Good analogies were offered throughout to explain complicated details, especially to illustrate those infinite statistics on the immense universe. I do appreciate this eye-opening experience, which definitely enriched my knowledge in many ways.

The first pages of the book will place you back to the past in the year of 1600, in the time when Giordano Bruno, fifty-one-year-old former priest, was condemned as a heretic by the Inquisition and executed, only because of his beliefs of which one was that the stars were other suns which were circled by planets like the Earth. After more than 300 years, people still dream about planets like the Earth, but this time they aren't alone, and the Inquisition is gone. :)

In the next few chapters the author will familiarize you with the four astronomical ingrediens of life, guide you through our own Solar system in the search for patterns in the data, compare our Sun with other similar stars and discuss how and why planets are formed. After that, there follows a visit to the Sun's distant outposts and history of discovery and search for Uranus, Neptune, Vulcan - the Phantom planet; Pluto and Planet X. Then journey to the stars begins and the next stop is Alpha Centauri, the closest stellar neighbor after our Sun. Chapter by chapter, you will learn where is our Sun in the stellar pyramid, what spectral types are best suitable for life conditions on local planets, how long life span that kind of stars should have, etc. The book explains many more things than mentioned above, and in the next half of it, it will explain how planets can be detected, where Vega, Beta Pictoris and Folmahaut are in the story about search for extrasolar worlds, and how we could promptly confuse ourselves with misinterpreted data. Where should we draw a border for the definition of the planets? Small brown dwarfs and big Jupiter-like planets can be similar in mass and behaviour when looked from our perspective, but why are they different? Will the planets like Jupiter and Saturn guard or destroy life in the extrasolar systems? After many years of searching, the first planets are found around Pulsars - in a place where almost nobody expected to find them. After the discovery of first "regular" planets, the list of extrasolar planets was becoming bigger and bigger. How the planets were discovered? What are the techniques most efficient, and what are the most promising? How interferometry works, and how can it be used?

When you start to read Planet Quest, it will be hard for you to stop. Many pages of the book are the interviews and excerpts from interviews which the author has made with astronomers like Clyde Tombaugh, Shrinivas Kulkarni, Shiv Kumar, Andrew Lyne, Geoffrey Marcy, Paul Butler, Alan Boss, Michel Mayor, Didier Queloz and many more. Every astronomer has his own story to tell, so you end up with many short stories, written by many authors, and not just the author of the book.

After final chapters, you have the Catalogue of planets with stellar and planetary data, an extensive glossary, notes and big bibliography.

Croswell takes us on a journey of exploration from the discovery of distant planets within our own solar system to the discovery of brown drawfs and planets in orbit around other stars. I found this book to be both informative and enjoyable to read.

The recent events in the discovery of extra-solar planets are known to many of us but this book describes much more than simply a chronology of planets found in successful searches. It also details the theories and theorists that made predictions long before observations of these small bodies was possible. Croswell interviewed many of the scientists actually involved in the search for planets. Whether successful or not, he outlines many of the techniques that were tried in the search and the reasons why some are better at discovering some types of planets than others.

By the end of the book I felt I truly knew the mind of a planet hunter. The book lets you relive the thrill of the find, the embarrassment of observational errors and the despair of years of negative results.

Reading this book is quite easy, more like a novel than non-fiction. Like most well-made historical documentaries it is exciting to recount the events even when you know the final outcome.

This is an excellent book on the given subject, covering the history of the search for other planets in a technically proficient but accessible way. Croswell frequently brings in the scientists involved and lets us hear what they have to say. Since the search for planets has often been controversial, this makes for exciting reading sometimes, as two leaders in the field take turns taking potshots at each other.

Mostly, though, it brings more of a human face to this arcane endeavor. Croswell also takes pains to explain how the search is progressing and how so many false alarms have managed to take place over the years.

Again, an excellent book.

Mr. Croswell takes a technical topic and presents it in a tremendously fascinating context that is easily understood and captivating. From the history of planet discovery to the wealth of information presented about man's pursuit of knowledge of the heavens - this book intrigued me. No doubt reams of research were compiled and condensed by the author to assemble this tale of post modern and modern exploration of the heavens. When finished, I felt I gained a better understanding of not only the planet Earth and our solar system - but what the galaxy we live in may present for discovery.

I highly reccomend this book to anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky - and wondered about other worlds that may be out there like our own.

First rate reading!

When I was a child and gazed at the heavens in awe, I always wanted to comprehend the stars. I saw in the moon a pupil of an eye almost like the negative image in black and white film. I was transfixed for endless hours by the Northern Lights and a full solar equinox put me over the top. No book before Planet Quest has captured the thrill of discovery I enjoyed as a child. Dr. Croswell introduces us to the adventurers who shined their light along the way. A+

I generally liked this book. I will mention here that the author does tend to write in all the politics amongst the different astronomers and their institutions, making these people real and their discoveries intriguing. However, the bitterness he dotes on gets tiring in some places. Also, he writes to keep you in suspence and only a few times does the anticipation get annoying.

Mr. Croswell takes a technical topic and presents it in a tremendously fascinating context that is easily understood and captivating. From the history of planet discovery to the wealth of information presented about man's pursuit of knowledge of the heavens - this book intrigued me. No doubt reams of research were compiled and condensed by the author to assemble this tale of post modern and modern exploration of the heavens. When finished, I felt I gained a better understanding of not only the planet Earth and our solar system - but what the galaxy we live in may present for discovery.

I highly reccomend this book to anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky - and wondered about other worlds that may be out there like our own.

First rate reading!