Satellite Books

Excellent Science book for people reviewing for their GED. I use it with Hispanic students. The book is written in concise, clear English. All my students appreciate the detailed explanations of why a given answer is the correct one.

One of the great books written about Croatian genocide against Serbs and Vatican's involment in this holocaust. Over 250 catholic priests took part and even led Croats in bruttal extermination of Serbs from Croatia. This crime is hidden and remains hidden from public eyes since Vatican was so heavily and seriously involved. Will we ever see Avro Manhatan's book "Vatican's Holocaust" available on Amazon? I doubt it.....

Please buy my book so that I can retire soon!

Len Jacobson has prepared one of, if not the best compendiums on the creation, evolution, current status and future of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). It is up-to-date and comprehensive in all ways. Plus it is a simple, easy to understand read.

Everyone who has anything to do with, or any interest in GNSS should consider this a "must read." For policy makers...especially those in Congress and in the civilian agencies of the U.S. Federal government...this is the best primer available. It makes clear why it is so important that the U.S. Departments of Transportation, Commerce, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and Interior need to take an aggressive, hands-on posture toward funding, design and deployment issues now facing the nation's GPS.

Eric C. Peterson
GPS Users Alliance

This book provides the best overall technical discussion of the use of satellite imagery and radar data in weather forecasting. For the weather enthusiast this book may at times be difficult to understand;however, there still is plenty of easy to understand information pertaining to visible, infrared, and water vapor imagery interpretation. The book is richly appointed with color and black and white figures with concise discussions of the meteorological conditions that produce the weather described in the figure. I would especially recommend this book for the serious student of meteorology.

It was a good book. Lots of information.

Dr. Snow has taken the wildly overlooked area of telecommunication deregulation and turned it into a readable feast for the intellect

Oh, yes, there are several excellent books about Jupiter for the layman. But if you have a technical background and want to learn about Jupiter, why not get the real thing? And this book is indeed the one to get. It has an introduction, twenty-six excellent papers by noted experts in their fields, and a CD with some additional color images. It contains information discovered by the Voyager, Galileo, and even the Cassini missions, as well as from a variety of telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope.

The book starts out by addressing questions of Jupiter's origin and interior. A major question is the ratio of helium to hydrogen. That value has to be above the minimum set by cosmology (Big Bang nucleosynthesis), given that the high metallicity of both Jupiter and the Sun suggest that we're not dealing with primordial matter. And one would expect it to be less than the ratio for our Sun, given that the Sun has produced some helium by burning hydrogen. But measurements of this ratio seem a little low, and we're treated to some possible explanations.

Next, we learn about the Jovian atmosphere. An interesting question here has been the amount of water and its significance. And we learn about some of the photochemistry of the stratosphere. As the editors say, "if you like your hydrocarbons fricasseed and you like to dance under a strobe of X-rays, then Jupiter's middle and upper atmosphere is the place to be."

After this, we move a little higher up, to discuss Jovian dust, including Jupiter's rings. How thick are they? How dense? And are the gossamer rings really composed of micron-sized particles and smaller? We then are introduced to the outer satellites and the Trojan asteroids.

There are papers discussing the major satellites in some detail. We learn about Io, its tidal heating, and its volcanoes. And about Europa, including its tides and tectonics. There's material about Europa's Laplace mean motion resonance with Io and Ganymede. And a discussion of astrobiological issues: if Europa has liquid water under its crust, and if there are hydrothermal vents, it is possible that life exists there. There is a paper about the atmospheres of the satellites, and another about radiation effects on satellite surfaces.

Jupiter's large size and 10-hour rotation period are responsible for an immense Jovian magnetosphere, and the final papers in this book discuss various aspects of it. We learn about magnetospheric interactions with satellites. And about the Io plasma torus. And there is a paper on the dynamics of the magnetosphere. One fundamental question here which still has not been totally resolved is the process by which this magnetosphere manages to accelerate the Io plasma from basically a few electron volts to well over 100 thousand electron volts. And there is a fascinating paper about Jupiter's aurora.

The final paper is on the Jovian radiation belts. Issues include the basic electron energy spectrum in the inner radiation belts and the wave modes that may be present there. And there is a practical issue as well: if we don't know what radiation fluxes we're facing, it will be tougher to design the next deep space probe to Jupiter.

If you are interested in studying any aspect of the Jovian system, this book is a good place to start. I highly recommend it.

Lasers offer numerous advantages over microwaves for broadcast point to point communications including lower power, tighter focus/footprint, dramatically increased bandwidth, lighter weight (very important if the equipment is being lifted to space), and no requirement for government frequency assignment. Unfortunately these advantages come with some disadvantages as well, especially in weather penetration if the signal goes from space to the surface of the earth.

This book describes the overall engineering aspects of laser space communications systems. It will enable the engineer to design laser data links in a variety of environments. It is intended for the advanced undergraduate student through the practicing engineer and covers all aspects of laser communications including bandwidths, error rate, privacy aspects, platform stability, adaptive optics, weather avoidance systems and advanced concepts of the Transformational Communication Architecture.

Mr. Aviv has 30+ years of experience in laser communications with various Air Force, NASA, and SDI projects.

Anyone who wants to understand the complex dynamics of the culture of Ulster and Northern Ireland would do well to include this very readable book in their study.