Tag Archives: Astronomy

Near-Earth Objects – Donald K. Yeomans ****

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As I write this there has just been a meteor strike in Russia leaving hundreds injured, so it is very timely to be considering, as the subtitle puts it, how we can find ‘them before they find us.’

Donald Yeomans’ book introduces us to the origins of the solar system (including a relatively recent update on the traditional model with the ‘Nice model’) and explains why there is so much debris out there that has the potential of crashing to Earth from the tiny bits of dust and pebble sized rocks that burn up harmlessly as meteors to the impressively large and scary kilometre scale asteroids and comets.

While in no sense scare-mongering, Yeomans makes it clear just why we need to be on the look out for incoming material, explains what the risks are and explores the opportunities for intervening and preventing potential disaster. It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as Yeomans also gives us chapter and verse on the potential to make use of relatively accessible near Earth objects, either to get hold of scarce materials, to act as a way station en route to a distant destination like Mars, or both (when, for instance a NEO way station could be mined for water on the way to Mars).

Unlike many books involving space exploration I didn’t get the feeling of fantasy, wishful thinking or sabre rattling. Yeomans just gives us good, reasoned arguments, presented in the main in a likeable, friendly fashion. The only major irritation is that Yeomans does occasionally flip into ‘astronomer cataloguing mode’, giving us long tedious lists, foe example when describing where the near Earth objects come from. Be prepared to skip a page or two – but the focus on readability soon returns.

Overall, if you are interested in astronomy, the solar system or the survival of the human race, this is a book that should spark your interest.

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Review by Brian Clegg

A Down to Earth Guide to the Cosmos – Mark Thompson ***

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I got into amateur astronomy at the age of 11, and for a number years took it very seriously – and like pretty well anyone who does, I bought myself a good guide. I’ve still got it, and I treasure it – it’s Patrick Moore’s The Amateur Astronomer. Now Mark Thompson is setting out to do something similar for a new generation, and in reviewing it, I’ve had my Moore book alongside as a touchstone – so this has ended up as a kind of double review.

For those not familiar with Thompson (me included), he apparently appears on the BBC’s early evening magazine show, The One Show and on the BBC’s annual Stargazing Live with the ubiquitous Brian Cox, talking about astronomy. The book is organised in 12 sections, one for each month, with a general information chapter and then star charts for northern and southern hemispheres and a commentary for the month.

When the information chapter keeps to astronomy and the practicalities of it, Thompson is very good. As you might expect, he’s less pedantic and more chatty than Moore writing in 1957 (the book wasn’t new when I bought it!), and he really gets across the enjoyment of getting out there and taking a look at the sky, plus gives good guidance on how to watch meteors (strangely this appears twice), getting the right equipment and a fair amount more. This was solid four star material.

When the information chapters stray into cosmology and physics, Thompson becomes a little more flaky. Of course he’s much more up-to-date on the cosmology than Moore (I assume the 2000 edition is a lot more with it), but I can’t imagine Patrick telling us that Ritter discovered ultraviolet when he noticed that ‘a chemical called sodium chloride’ (i.e. common salt) was turned black by it. I think he means silver chloride.

Thompson also trips up several times on black holes. For example, he tells us that ‘the mass of a black hole is so high even light… is unable to escape.’ This isn’t a matter of mass – in principle you could have a micro black hole with a tiny mass (it just couldn’t form from a star). It’s the extreme curvature of spacetime that stops light getting out, not how big the mass is. His quantum theory is a bit iffy too.

Finally there are the star charts. In Moore’s book these are among a whole host of appendices, which contain loads of fascinating data I used to love poring over as a youth. None of that from Thompson I’m afraid. Moore, rather sensibly doesn’t try to match the map to any particular date. Instead he uses key, easy to find constellations as pointers and builds his maps from these. Thompson gives us Northern hemisphere maps that are only useful to a degree as they stop at the celestial equator. This makes for a strange disconnect with the commentary, as the maps don’t show the whole sky you would see from, say, England. So both January and February’s commentary have a lot to say about Orion – but neither the January or February map shows Orion.

In fact the maps just don’t have enough detail. Moore’s pointer approach means he can dedicated page after page so you can find loads of stars – far more than Thompson ever identifies. Of course you might say with the phone apps and computer planetarium software Thompson mentions and Moore couldn’t even imagine we don’t need maps any more. But I think Moore’s are really useful for getting a working knowledge of the sky – Thompson’s less so.

Overall then, if you want a real astronomer’s guide I would go for the relatively new 2000 edition of Moore’s book. If you don’t really intend to use it and just want to read a bit about astronomy and the cosmos, you could do worse than Thompson’s book. But it’s a shame it wasn’t better. It’s telling that Moore’s book feature’s an astronomical image on the cover (my old edition has a picture of the moon) – Thompson’s, driven by TV-celebrity science, has a picture of him. I know which I’d rather look at.

Mark Thompson – A Down to Earth Guide to the Cosmos

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Patrick Moore – The Amateur Astronomer

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Review by Brian Clegg

Stars and the Dust that Made Us – Raman Prinja ****

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This is, without doubt, one of the stronger members of the ‘The Universe Rocks’ series – helped by the fact that there are few more amazing topics than stars. In the book, young readers are taken through how stars are born, the life cycle of the Sun, different types of stars, the role of stars in making the other elements from hydrogen, and the final destinations of stars, including, of course, neutron stars and black holes. There’s some really meaty material here and though Raman Prinja does sometimes leave out the best bits, there’s enough to real grab the imagination and inspire a young astronomer.

What is also good is that the activities are quite strong and well focussed on the subject. We have had complaints with some of the other books in the series that creaky old science projects (like the dreaded baking powder and vinegar volcano) are hauled out of the closet to pad out a book where it’s difficult to produce appropriate activities, but in this title the activities are spot on. We are invited to make an experiment to simulate why the stars twinkle, we do an ingenious experiment with a table tennis ball and a tennis ball to see a kind of shock wave in action, and we take a look at the stars themselves to perform a survey and make up our own constellations. Excellent.

There are a few quibbles. The whole series is too dark and low contrast. It’s always a problem with illustrated books on space – the publisher can’t resist the temptation of using a black background for many of the pages, but the result is a rather murky visual style. I also did think there were some good bits missed. No reference to the role of quantum tunnelling in fusion in the Sun, for instance, and it’s not made clear enough that stars can’t go beyond iron in producing elements without the help of a supernova. Similarly I would have liked to have seen not just why stars twinkle, but why planets don’t. But there is plenty to enjoy.

Overall, a good introduction to stars and nucleosynthesis for the young reader that is definitely recommended.

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Review by Brian Clegg

To the Planets and Beyond – Raman Prinja ***

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Another in the ‘The Universe Rocks’ series of slim illustrated astronomy/cosmology books for children, this is a guide to the planets, where they came from and what’s out there around other stars.

Generally speaking a good addition to the series, with some good solid content, though I’m not sure that the two page spread on volcanoes really deserves to be there except to justify having that science fair classic, the baking soda and vinegar volcano as one of the four activity pages. Let’s face it, there’s a limit to the activities you can do when you are dealing with planets.

I was also less than overwhelmed by the activity of making a sun dial – not because there’s anything wrong with it as an activity, but rather because it’s stretching things to make it have a lot to do with planets. The best of the activities by far was unrolling 90 sheets of toilet roll and using this as a scale model of the solar system. This really was a fun and original suggestion.

Plenty of reasonable content, then (though the overall feel, as with many of the books in this series was rather too dark and muddy in appearance), but not the most inspiring of the books.

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Review by Jo Reed

Awesome Astronomy – Raman Prinja ****

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Part of the Science Crackers series (I think in the sense of ‘being a cracker’ rather than ‘being crackers’), this is a slim large format book introducing the basics of astronomy. Each page contains a mix of text and illustrations, combining lively drawn images with some good photographs. It works well as a basic introduction to astronomy, with a mix of informative sections with opportunities for hands-on activity, from making your own craters to projecting constellations. It’s a shame, though, there wasn’t a lot about hands on astronomy – actually going out there and looking at things.

Mostly the book works well. The content is sound, though can be a bit plonking, defining what stuff is without much in the way of storytelling. There are plenty of facts, but I would have liked a bit more finesse. Sometimes things could do with a little more information too – so we are told, for instance that constellations are patterns people saw in the way stars are grouped together – it would have been good to say they aren’t actually grouped that way, they just happen to look that way from where we’re standing.

Overall it’s a good little book with plenty of content.

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Review by Brian Clegg

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

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This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system.

Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here.

Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to any beginning astronomer.

Throughout the pages are on good semi-glossy paper, so the full colour illustrations are better quality than is sometimes achieved. Overall, this book was a very pleasant surprise. It may not be a typical, end-to-end read popular science book but combines genuinely readable, interesting and informative text with a host of practical maps and data. Good stuff.

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Review by Brian Clegg

Stargazer’s Almanac 2013 – Bob Mizon et al *****

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If your idea of an almanac is a thick old book full of folk wisdom (‘If ye plant in October, your crops will fall over’), phases of the moon and tide times, you’ll only get one thing right about this almanac – it does contain phases of the moon. But the Stargazer’s Almanac is much more.

The format is one of a large month-by-month calendar, but instead of having spaces to write in when you take the dog to the vets, the children to the cinema or vice versa, it has two big spreads of the horizon, looking North and looking South on the 15th of the month at 10pm GMT from a UK viewpoint. With this in hand you should be able to explore the night sky and sort out Andromeda from Perseus. As well as constellations it shows the positions of planets, points out interesting stars, and, yes, shows the phase of the moon through the month.

After the charts there are a couple of pairs of pages of information, one on dark skies (it seems the place to be in the UK to avoid skyglow is Sark) and a jolly page on Edwin Hubble and galaxies. I really felt that with this in hand I could find my way around the sky as I never have before. I can spot a couple of constellations and three planets, but with the help of the almanac, much more of the sky opens up.

I was slightly disappointed with the production values – it’s not particularly cheap, but the paper is quite dull in appearance (probably very eco-friendly). And there could have been more help on what you do if it’s not 10pm on the 15th of the month, though to be fair there is a bit of guidance, but more handholding would have been appreciated.

As it is, though, this is a really valuable asset to the amateur astronomer and a good gift for anyone with even the slightest interest in the stars. It’s the kind of thing that over time is likely to be pushed out by smartphone and iPad apps like SkyView, but it does have the advantage that you can still sit and enjoy it on a wet Tuesday afternoon.

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Review by Brian Clegg

Out Of This World – Clive Gifford ****

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This rather handsome little hardback has the right feel for a next generation popular science book for young readers. It still has the fun and illustrations of something like the Horrible Science series, but it feels more modern (and robust), more of today than the sort of frozen-in-time culture of the Beano that pervades the ‘Horrible’ books. Having said that I wish they hadn’t used the really old fashioned, early Tomorrow’s World ‘hi-tech’ font for the section titles.

We start from the Earth and take a tour outwards in the solar system and the universe, following up with the inevitable stuff on telescopes, space travel and a touch of cosmology. It’s all fine, with lots and lots of content. The only thing really that has been omitted is picking up more on the fun side that comes out of Horrible Science. I missed both the humour (even though I’d prefer it to be a bit more modern) and the personal touch. There wasn’t enough about the personalities in this book – it’s all fact, fact, fact.

As is often the case with a book like this, the physics is just a touch weaker than the  astronomy. Mostly it’s not too bad, but when talking about gravity, for example, I would have liked to have seen a little bit on general relativity – it’s easy enough to make it approachable to this age group – and the explanation of microgravity on a space station is misleading it suggests the pull of gravity is practically zero, where actually it’s around 90% Earth normal, it’s just that astronauts are weightless because they are falling.

Overall, then, a good solid book on astronomy, space and cosmology, but one that isn’t going to set the world on fire.

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Review by Brian Clegg

Space Chronicles – Neil de Grasse Tyson **

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I really struggled with this book. I love space and space travel – I have lived through and been thrilled by the entire space race and the development of space science. I expected to love a book by a great astronomer and science populariser, but instead I pretty well had to give up, part way through.

There are two problems. The lesser one is the structure of the book. It consists of a collection of articles, interviews and such that Tyson has produced on the subject of space exploration. This inevitably means there is repetition. A lot of repetition. It’s not that what he is saying is not interesting, but after you’ve heard it for the tenth time it loses its novelty. Perhaps the most interesting thing is the way Tyson is so obviously pulled in two directions. On the one hand he appreciates how superior unmanned satellites and explorers are from a bang-per-buck science viewpoint. On the other hand he believes manned missions are essential to raise interest levels. But of course manned missions are very expensive and almost purely political/military in role, so he really does have to go through some entertaining gymnastics to defend them.

But the thing that made me give up was the sheer jingoism of the book. If you aren’t an American, I can guarantee this book will irritate you. Here’s one example, the words of an interviewer speaking to Tyson (who Tyson doesn’t argue with): ‘If we land on Mars, how are we going to know if USA is number one if an American astronaut is standing next to a French guy? Are we going to say, “Go Earth!”? No, we’re going to say, “Go USA!” Right?’ So basically international cooperation like CERN is a waste of time and money – all that’s important, all that space science is about, is knowing that USA is number one.

An even better example, as it is purely Tyson’s own remarks is when he is talking about the aerospace industry, bemoaning the loss of US control. He says ‘In the fifties, sixties, seventies, part of the eighties, every plane that landed in your city was made in America. From Aerolineas Argentinas to Zambian Airways, everybody flew Boeings.’ I’m sorry? I worked for an airline in the 1970s, and I can tell you this is total baloney (which is apparently American for bilge). Remind me, for example, who built the Comet, the first jet airliner. Which American company? Oh, no, it was British. Of course Boeing was the biggest player in the period he describes, but there were plenty of others. (There were even a couple of other US manufacturers. Remember Lockheed?) Could I just point out also who made the only supersonic airliner flying back then. And come to think of it, the only one to fly ever since. The UK and France. And what did the US contribute to this amazing advance? They tied it up with red tape and objections so it was almost impossible to fly it.

This really made me angry, I’m afraid. In another article, Tyson tells off a judge for inaccuracy because he referred to 1,700 milligrams rather than 1.7 grams. Okay, it wasn’t a particularly sensible convention, but at least it wasn’t wrong. Saying ‘all planes were (US) Boeings’ is just factual inaccuracy to put across your political position. A book on space travel must cover politics, but once it is so hugely politically biased towards one country, however significant it may have been to the aerospace business, it loses credibility. This isn’t a book about space science, it’s a rallying cry for Americans. That’s something that has its place. I’m not knocking America, and it’s good that Tyson is proud of his country. But a science book isn’t the place for such sentiments.

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Review by Brian Clegg

Hubble: the mirror on the universe – Robin Kerrod & Carole Stott ***

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I was asked to review this book as I also looked at a book with a scarily similar title, Hubble: window on the universe. Both are coffee table books that depend on pictures from the Hubble telescope for their appeal. Both have 224 pages of big colour pictures, using those stunning images that Hubble has provided over the years.

I can’t fault the image selection in either. Here, after a quick look at the telescope itself we progress through stars, stellar destruction, galaxies, the big bang, the solar system and planets. Of the two, the text is definitely better in this book, while the other title has the edge on the photos because of the sheer size of the book – 37×30 to this book’s 28×23. That extra size means that ‘window’ really wows you visually.

However the bigger pictures here are still stunning, and it is noticeably easier to hold. You can just about read this in your lap, where ‘window’ probably needs to be on a table to have a chance.

This is an excellent choice, and in its 2011 third edition the more up-to-date of the two. I also significantly preferred the text here. But this isn’t going to be the sort of book you read cover-to-cover, and as such, for the sheer scale of the photos, the other book just has the edge. And if you want a book that’s more manageable to read with a stronger concentration on the text, I’d probably recommend our editor’s Exploring the Universe instead. It doesn’t stop this being an excellent book, though – and this book would make a great present for anyone interested in astronomy.

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Review by Jo Reed