Astronomy Books

The general impression one receives upon cracking the cover of this book , is of library quality rather than a "field book" , since the paper stock is of high quality gloss finish. I would use this book indoors to plan my observing sessions and use either photocopies of the star charts appended at the end of the book , or a field type star chart for outdoor use.

More classes of objects are covered in this volume than in "Star Watch" : galaxies , asterisms , star clusters , multiple stars , and quasars are all represented. Rather extensive verbal descriptions are included with directions for finding approximately 300 celestial objects , along with very interesting descriptions and explanations of them. The only criticism I have is that a few of the Messier objects are not included.

In a direct comparison with "Star Watch" , I find this volume to be more difficult to use. For a beginning astronomer , I would recommend this book as a follow-up project once the skies are familiar. "Star Watch" is a bit more user friendly for beginners. I still rate this work 5 stars and recommend it. The author has an excellent approach to finding and explaining celestial wonders.

The first five chapters contain excellent instructive material, followed by the seasonally ordered descriptive material. The reference material in the back includes useful listings of data on the objects described in the book, the constellations, the Messier Objects, an excellent Bibliography and useful addresses listing many web sites in both cases, in addition to a Star Atlas.

The unusual atlas included at the back is appropriate for the magnitudes of the objects described in the book. Unfortunately the author failed to include a crucial bit of information for each description by omitting a page reference for the location of the objects in the Atlas. Perhaps this will be corrected in a future edition of a book which will certainly merit further printings.

Despite this annoying defect, this is a good buy and a valuable tool for a beginning star observer. Although some of the objects described can be seen with good binoculars and a few with the naked eye, you will need at least a 100mm telescope or better to see many of them.

It is rare to find books on science written in such readable and understandable prose. It was quite a pleasure to read this book!

It is also my opinion that most authors of science related publications could learn something (and probably sell more books!) by observing Mr. Rubin's writing style.

For me, I'd never made the connection that domesticatable animals might be a requirement for a technologically advanced civilization. And while I'd read a number of books (both fiction and non-fiction) suggesting that life might not have evolved if it weren't for our planet's large moon, I had not previously read that the Moon stabilizes the tilt of the earth's axis. I knew about the Moon's role in nutation of the earth's axis, but was not aware that French astronomers had recently performed a computer simulation of what would happen to the earth's axis over time if the Moon were absent. (Gravitational interaction between the planets and earth's equatorial bulge would cause the obliquity of the ecliptic to vary chaotically over relatively small time periods -- millions of years. Such unstable seasons would lead to extreme global climatic fluctuations, making it much more difficult for life to establish itself.)

As you might expect, there are many dozens of photographs, diagrams, graphs and illustrations scattered throughout. Indeed, this is the first book I've ever seen that contained pictures of the plaque aboard the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, the pictogram sent out by the Arecibo dish back in 1974 toward M13, photographs of crater chains on Callisto and the Moon, and a table of all the magnetic pole reversals -- all in one place. It will make a nice reference book whenever I need to find something fast.

There is a fairly extensive 18-page glossary covering most of the technical terms in the book, and there are also 10 pages of chapter by chapter references for additional reading. Rubin obviously spent a lot of time putting all of this together.

Of course, in any technical book there are bound to be typos and errors, though I found very few. Page 94, for instance, has a confusing phrase "...gravitational resonance between the Moon and the debris disk..." I believe he meant ~earth~ and the debris disk. The most glaring mistake I found is that Figure 11.2 on pg. 164 is misidentified as being a partial eclipse of the earth when it is merely a crescent earth. There are a couple of minor errors in the glossary -- see if you can spot the problems with the definitions of arcsecond and parsec.

Overall, the book is well-written in plain English that you don't need a PhD is astrodynamics to understand. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to expand their appreciation of just how fortunate we are to be alive on this little blue ball.

This is the first Med Center book I read, and think it's better than Med Center #1 - Virus. It is very action-packed, and it shows the strong bond between the main four characters - Susannah, Will, Kate, and Abby. When one of the four are missing, the others are very worried.

I also like this book because it shows the romance that is trying to happen between Will and Susannah. Will likes Susannah a lot, and Susannah likes Will a lot, but neither of them know how the other one feels toward each other. When Kate is locked in the library, and the library is flooded up to the ceiling, it's Jeremy (yet another semi-main character) whos comes to her rescue. Jeremy has had a crush on Kate since they were in elementary school, and now that crush pays off when Jeremy risks his life swimming to the library to look for Kate, and swimming away again, only to come back with a boat and save Kate's life.

Susannah's twin brother, Sam, has a flood party on the riverbank. Not a good idea, as Susannah, Will, and Kate know, but Sam couldn't live a day without being at a party or having one of his own, so he invites about a dozen people to this flood party. The water rises quickly, and Sam convinces a few people to leave while there's still time, but the rest are like Sam and they just want to party-hardy all night long. What will be in store for them?

I think this is a really great book. I loved the suspense and action and I think you would, too!

The book opens with Collins describing the day of the first moon landing and then he begins to reflect on all the events that led him to be on Apollo 11 that day. The first few chapters of the book describe his earlier fascination with aircraft that ultimately led him to join the US Air Force. After an interesting and exciting career in the Air Force, which included being a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, he is chosen to be an astronaut in the third group selected. After years of training he eventually lift offs on his first flight in Gemini 10 with John Young. After more training and a nearly career-ending neck operation, he flies on Apollo 11.

Through out this book, the author describes his feelings and experiences about being an astronaut, what it's like to fly in space, what he did, what he saw and all the numerous sacrifices he and his family made so that he could be an astronaut. His experience of being alone while orbiting the moon is exhilarating. All this done in a very non-technical and jargon free way.

One final thing to add, this book won several Outstanding Book of Year Awards.

The take home message is simple enough:

God is Creator, Sustainer, Law-Giver, and Provider.

The best way to read the book is to xerox the chart on pg 198 and keep it at your elbow. It summarizes the entire book!!!

To Scripture you address questions of external relationships:
Status Origin Goverance Value Purpose
To Science you address questions of internal affairs:
Properties Behavior History

This in a single table is the argument of the book, but to understand the critical component: the categories of questions you need to hear the example he uses.
Holding up a piece of paper, he asks you to describe it, one voice answers GREEN, another offers SQUARE. pg 204-5 The paper is in fact, both. Is these two pieces of information contradictory, of course not, it is complementary, coming from two different viewpoints. The extend the example in a way that the author does not, to which person do you address the questions concerning shape, to which do you address questions concerning color?

The first part concerns Scripture and how to build a correct hermeneutic to interpret it by. Again he introduces a good illustration, i suspect from his years of teaching this has proven to be a good memory technic and organizing principle: good illustrations. It is the vehicle model of Scripture, pg 14ff, a caravan of vehicles carrying packages with things inside the packages, think a bunch of UPS brown vans. (looks remarkably like the compiler theory train) The vehicle is the cultural historical context as expressed in the literary genre the passage is written in. The packages are the specific story, particular symbolism in a poem, specific cultural patterns. The contents are God's message to His people, in all places, throughout all time. And from pg 83, "In either case, if we attempt to consume both the content and the packaging, we may encounter significant difficulty in chewing, swallowing, and digesting the combination. Those who want to feed on the truths of Scripture must take care to differentiate between food and packaging." The two cases to distinguish are a journalistic account of the actual events of creation(think video tape) from the primeval history account that we have in Genesis.(think metaphorical origins story- mythos)

Scientism and YEC(young earth creationists)- chapter 11, " more heat than light, the creation/evolution debate" and the real battle with unbelieving scientific naturalism as a religious doctrine. Van Till makes it clear throughout the book that the YEC position of apparent age is nothing more than bad science and bad theology, for it denies the coherence of creation. It denies that God created the universe with sufficent thought to have inside it the things it needs to build up the complexity we see around us. By more importantly it denies the value of creation as an arena for the providence of God, to operate through the use of physical means.

I finished the book with a touch of sadness. For the time, energy, and people the false debate of CED is consuming in the Christian community. While good frameworks like Van Till's are neglected for want of people to work on them. If AiG or ICR did not exist, and that energy and talent was used to advance Van Tills type of arguments the Church would be far along the way to competing with the real enemy. Scientism, the world and life view that we are nothing more than sophisticated machines, the result of mindless and random meanderings through the genetic space of living beings. This is a religious, a metaphysical battle, not scientific. For science rightfully limits itself to the things of this creation, the things we see and the forces we can theorize behind them. The YEC have diverted an enormous amount of energy into bad science, trying to fight a battle at the level of facts, denying the clear evidence for an old earth, while misinterpreting the preamble of the Great KIng of Genesis One as a scientific how-to-do book on the manufacture of us. Sadly we are all the weaker knowing that good ideas like this book have been around since 1986 and are yet to be discovered.

I hope you discover this book as a result of my review. It will well worth the time to read, and i didn't even try to tell you the gems in the astronomy section--part 2.

Several years after writing his first book on solar energy, Mr. Perlin uses From Space to Earth to reflect on the challeges the PV industry and it's early pioneers faced in developing, implementing and introducing a new technology to the World. Personal interviews and historical information are utilized to relay the story of PV technology and the people who helped turn it into a thriving industry that helps to meet the electrical needs of people around the globe.

The future of the PV industy is also addressed and the author expresses his opinions on what the future should hold for photovoltaics. From his support for Building Intergrated Photovoltaics (BI-PV) and distributed generation, to the easy to understand reviews of advances in solar-electric cell and module production, the author provides up to date information on where the industry stands and where it is heading.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the application of solar-electricity or solar energy in general.