Customer Reviews

The Star Splitters - The High Energy Astronomy Observatories (NASA SP-466)

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This is an excellent historical account of the behind the scenes details of NASA's HEAO missions. The author is not just a writer assigned to write the book, but a scientist as well. Although many scientists or engineers that write about their projects are too technical, Wallace H. Tucker, has a good balance between the technical and layman's writing style. Although there are places in the book that have become out dated, due to new observations, it still gives one a good starting point into the world of High Energy Astronomy and the methods used in the HEAO spacecraft to study this portion of the Universe.

S. Brotherton

This book published by NASA (NASA Special Publication, NASA SP-451) in early 1984 describes the High Energy Astronomy Observatory (HEAO) Missions which were developed to examine and analyze the nature of the high energy universe, stellar radiation and galactic radiation. Some of the topics covered in this book include creative violence, stellar explosions, cosmic rays, superbubbles, stellar coronas, collapsed stars, neutron stars, degenerate dwarf stars, black holes, X-ray images of galaxies, galactic nuclei, spiral galaxies, galactic clusters, the mystery of the missing mass, and cosmic fire. The book also covers the design of the mission, the spacecraft and the spacecraft instruments.

It is important to note that while this book has been out of print for many years; many excellent quality used copies of this book in hardback are available cost between $10 - 25.