The New Solar System

Rating:
Summary: An excellent source book
Review: "The New Solar System" is an excellent source book for anyone that is interested in our solar system. The book is just absolutely gorgeous, and the pictures and illustrations help bring the information to life. Inside its covers, this book contains a good spread of information on just about every single major body in our system. Everyone who worked on this item did an excellent job; the layout is very well done making it easy to find whatever information you are looking for. If you just want to have one guide to the solar system, this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent source book
Review: "The New Solar System" is an excellent source book for anyone that is interested in our solar system. The book is just absolutely gorgeous, and the pictures and illustrations help bring the information to life. Inside its covers, this book contains a good spread of information on just about every single major body in our system. Everyone who worked on this item did an excellent job; the layout is very well done making it easy to find whatever information you are looking for. If you just want to have one guide to the solar system, this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: Non-expert's opinion
Review: As a layperson reading this book, I find it very easy to understand what is being said, and I feel that I am learning a great deal from it. The writing is interesting enough to hold my attention and keep me from drifting off, which is a problem I have with many other science texts. Overall, I am finding reading this book an enjoyable experience.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating tour of the solar system
Review: I greatly enjoy reading about astronomy, especially the science behind it. I purchased and read this book because I wanted to learn more in detail about our own solar system.
This book does indeed give the reader a fascinating tour of our solar system. It explains in detail many facts and theories regarding our solar system, which would seldom be found in a more general astronomy book. Before reading this book I had no idea how fascinating our solar system is!
Specifially, this book starts out by discussing exploring our solar system, and theories about the origin. It also has chapters devoted to the sun, planetary magnetospheres, cometary reservoirs, and the role of collisions. Then it has a chapter devoted to each terrestrial planet (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), and to the moon. It also discusses characteristics of both the terrestrial planets and giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). It also discusses planetary rings, moons of the giant planets, and Pluto and Charon, and patterns and relationships between bodies in the solar system. Then it discusses comets, asteroids, and meteorites. Then it brings up the question of life in the solar system. In the final chapter it tells about discoveries of planets in other planetary systems, and discussing techniques for discovering extrasolar planets (planets which orbit other stars besides the sun).
I will caution that sometimes this book gets into very detailed science, and can be difficult to understand. I had to read many parts very carefully in order to get it. Also, it was published back in 1999, so it doesn't take into account the most recent discoveries. But nevertheless, I found the science very fascinating to learn about, and enjoyed being given a tour of the solar system through this book.
I recommend this book for everyone who wants to learn in detail about solar system.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating tour of the solar system
Review: I greatly enjoy reading about astronomy, especially the science behind it. I purchased and read this book because I wanted to learn more in detail about our own solar system.
This book does indeed give the reader a fascinating tour of our solar system. It explains in detail many facts and theories regarding our solar system, which would seldom be found in a more general astronomy book. Before reading this book I had no idea how fascinating our solar system is!
Specifially, this book starts out by discussing exploring our solar system, and theories about the origin. It also has chapters devoted to the sun, planetary magnetospheres, cometary reservoirs, and the role of collisions. Then it has a chapter devoted to each terrestrial planet (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), and to the moon. It also discusses characteristics of both the terrestrial planets and giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). It also discusses planetary rings, moons of the giant planets, and Pluto and Charon, and patterns and relationships between bodies in the solar system. Then it discusses comets, asteroids, and meteorites. Then it brings up the question of life in the solar system. In the final chapter it tells about discoveries of planets in other planetary systems, and discussing techniques for discovering extrasolar planets (planets which orbit other stars besides the sun).
I will caution that sometimes this book gets into very detailed science, and can be difficult to understand. I had to read many parts very carefully in order to get it. Also, it was published back in 1999, so it doesn't take into account the most recent discoveries. But nevertheless, I found the science very fascinating to learn about, and enjoyed being given a tour of the solar system through this book.
I recommend this book for everyone who wants to learn in detail about solar system.

Rating:
Summary: An Exciting Journey
Review: I was introduced to this book by the way of a Planetary Geology course at Rutgers University, and I have loved it ever since - it was the only textbook I didn't sell back at the end of the semester. Now I understand what images the word "textbook" conjures up so let me say that this book by no means is a traditional textbook. It is filled with incredible pictures and graphical illustrations. Some of these photos are so brand new (i.e photos taken by Galileo, Mars Global Surveyor, and Hubble Space Telescope) that the only other place to find them is online. The complex scientific theories that are presented in the book are each patiently explained along with illustrations so that even novices will understand, while those that have a firm grasp of the material will not feel lectured to.

One of the most wonderful features of this book is that all of the planets and all of the important moons in our Solar System have their own individual chapters, along with supplementary photos and graphics. Important physical features of each planet and all of the important moons are explained. Even though I considered myself knowledgeable about the solar system before reading this book, I found new things on every page.

My professor literally held this book in such high regard he lectured straight from the book, using the photos and illustrations. Even so by the time the semester ended, there was still material left that he didn't have time to cover. This speaks to the sheer amount of information that this book contains. It is a sheer delight!

If you find yourself looking up at the sky at night and wondering what is up there, you must read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent Understanding of the Solar System
Review: If you only have one book on your "Solar System" shelf, this must be it.

With clearly laid out and beautifully illustrated chapters, the Authors describe our Solar system, both as it is now and how it came to be. A very practical compromise between the rich detail of scientific theory and the basics of how, why and what.

There is material here for everyone, from the professional scientist who is looking for some context to the amateur who wants to see pictures with real explanations - not just the broad and innacurate statements we see so often on the internet.

You cannot go far wrong by using this book as a foundation stone of your understanding of the solar system.

As with any such work, future missions will change our understanding, but this book describes what we have already seen and why we think what we do about the planets. Once you understand this, you will share in the excitement of new missions, especially when they discover new things that change our understanding.

Well illustrated and produced, this book will appeal to the scientific reader, whether Amateur or Professional.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent Understanding of the Solar System
Review: If you only have one book on your "Solar System" shelf, this must be it.

With clearly laid out and beautifully illustrated chapters, the Authors describe our Solar system, both as it is now and how it came to be. A very practical compromise between the rich detail of scientific theory and the basics of how, why and what.

There is material here for everyone, from the professional scientist who is looking for some context to the amateur who wants to see pictures with real explanations - not just the broad and innacurate statements we see so often on the internet.

You cannot go far wrong by using this book as a foundation stone of your understanding of the solar system.

As with any such work, future missions will change our understanding, but this book describes what we have already seen and why we think what we do about the planets. Once you understand this, you will share in the excitement of new missions, especially when they discover new things that change our understanding.

Well illustrated and produced, this book will appeal to the scientific reader, whether Amateur or Professional.

Rating:
Summary: A glorious introduction to our solar system
Review: It's easy to read! You can read the chapters in just about any order. The material is mostly descriptive, without any complicated mathematics. And it's a terrific collection, with wonderful color pictures, graphs, and charts. This Fourth edition (1999) is the first to have pictures (and other data) of Jupiter and of the Jovian satellites taken by the Galileo mission. And yes, I suspect there will be a fifth edition which will include, among other new material, pictures of Saturn and its satellites taken by the Cassini mission.

This is the best possible introduction to the study of our Solar System. I'd recommend reading it before getting into a more formal university textbook on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Same Old Theories of the New Solar System
Review: Science purports to be searching for the truth. This book arduously tries to hammer the new data into the same old theories. The book is based on the big bang theory followed by the evolved concept of the present solar system. If you seek knowledge and truth about the origin of the planets, rings, moons, asteroid belt and comets you will not find it here. This book defends old theories.

The evidence is stong that we live in a Velikovskian solar system. And the evidence grows stronger every year. Looking at the planets and the moons you see objects whose surfaces have been hammered by millenia of impacting asteroids and comets. No two planets are alike. They range from huge to tiny. They do not all rotate in the same direction. All of them are at different inclination angles, all have different rotation periods. The planets are more probably random passers-by now captives of the sun rather than accretions of star stuff!

The asteroid belt which so mathematically fits where a planet should be, is not just space debris as this book seems to say, but the rubble of a planet and/or a moon that was. It is not well explored in this book.While it hints at a few of these exciting theories which the data more and more confirm, the book still falls back continually to defending the scientific status quo. And where it can no longer do so, it resorts to language ambiguity or new labored theories to explain what is becoming embarrassingly obvious. I found this book disappointing and costly. However, it will look good on the coffee table.