Customer Reviews

Planetary Sciences

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What's the best book to use as a text in a senior-year course on planetary science? This one gets my vote! It seems to cover everything.

After a nice introductory chapter comes the first test for this book: a 20-page chapter on dynamics with 5 pages of exercises. And this book does a great job. It explains Lagrangian points, orbital resonances, the chaotic nature of the orbit of Pluto, tides, the Yarkovski effect, and so on. And it just gets better after that, with more than 70 pages on planetary atmospheres (structure, composition, clouds, winds, photochemistry, escape). This is followed by hefty sections on planetary surfaces, planetary interiors, and planetary magnetospheres, each of which discuss the individual planets and satellites separately.

Next is a chapter on meteorites, along with radiometric dating. A chapter on asteroids: their orbits, size distribution, collisional evolution, surfaces, structures, and asteroid observing techniques. And a chapter on comets, including their origins and constraints on planetary system formation theories.

We return to dynamics for the ensuing chapter, on planetary rings: thicknesses, resonances, density waves, and shepherding. Following that is a chapter on planet formation, followed by a short concluding chapter on extrasolar planets.

The exercises are instructive and useful throughout. I learned a great deal of material from this book, even though it was nowhere near my first exposure to planetary science.

This is a superb book, if a little complex. You do need some mathematical and physics background to really follow all the topics. Well written, and having taken a class from Imke de Pater at Cal, a great representation of her work.

I've used several astronomy textbooks for my classes and this is by far the worse. It doesn't explain concepts as well as other textbooks, the topics are scattered and it does not explain equations, or show how they are derived.

The delivery was ok, but the book, selled as new, had a big mark on the side and the front cover was creased. Upon my request for explanation, the seller (after four days) agreed to either take the book back with full refund or to give me a 20% refund.