Astronomy Books

From Space To Earth: The Story Of Solar Electricity surveys the fascinating evolution of photovoltaics from its problematic and controversial nineteenth century beginnings to its outstanding technological success in the space program, to the indispensable and versatile role as a power source for contemporary daily life. More than the story of a technology, From Space To Earth is also a chronicle of the individuals who, for the most part unrecognized in the history of science) persevered, took chances, bucked authority, innovated, invented, and crusaded to provide humanity with an infallible power source in the form of solar cells and the safe, clean, renewable energy they provide for everything from satellite communication systems to hot water heaters for the home. Informative and thoroughly "reader friendly", John Perlin's From Space To Earth is highly recommended reading and an important addition to any academic or public library history of science collection.

Have you ever asked yourself "Who discovered the photovoltaic effect?". Or maybe you are interested in knowing how the PV industry started and who were the early PV pioneers. Well, look no further, because all of this information and much more make up From Space To Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity by John Perlin.

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.

Finally, here is a book about an environmental topic that isn't depressing. In fact, it's so uplifting that you may find yourself pumping your arm and cheering. Perlin keeps it light on the solid-state physics and instead chronicles the social, economical, and political issues surrounding the application of photovoltaics. He explains advances in technology clearly and with no jargon. This book should be highly enjoyable even for those who flunked P-chem.

I really enjoyed reading this book. This book is mainly about Galileo's theory of universe and the trial of Galileo which was caused by his conflict with the Catholic Church. This book also talks about Galileo's life briefly. I learned about theories that influenced Galileo's ideas and his opinion toward Copernicus's theory which stated that the all of the planets, including the earth, revolved around the sun.

This is a brief, well balanced account of the conflict between Galileo and the Church. It opens with an insightful look at the world view and astronomy of the late 1500's, including a detailed look at the role of Scripture in these views. This is followed with a thorough description of Galileo's life and how his conflict with the church unfolded. The final chapter is a fascinating overview of the relationships between faith, science and philosophy since Galileo's time. It's not overly difficult reading, though it deals with science, theology and philosophy. The book is a fair account, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of Galileo and some Church officials in how they approached the issues. It also critiques some long held cultural assumptions about the causes, events and meaning of this case (ex: Galileo was never tortured; some lower Church officials who disliked Galileo gave the Pope misleading reports, etc). Definitely worth reading!!

Langford is even-handed and doesn't withhold criticism of academia and the Church for its handling of Galileo and his books.

What I was taught by public school and the popular press:
The Catholic Church persecuted Galileo because he asserted the Earth revolved around the Sun, and was threatened with torture and death. Copernicus delayed publishing his theory for fear of persecution from the Church, finally publishing it on his deathbed.

What Langford convincingly shows from research into primary documents:
The Catholic Church was more receptive to the heliocentric theory than the universities. Pope Clement requested a hearing of Copernicus' theory in the Vatican gardens, and was "quite favorably impressed" with the theory. Copernicus was afraid of persecution from his peers, the universities, not the Catholic Church. His fears were well founded, as Galileo discovered years later. Galileo received the full weight of academic condemnation and ridicule. When professors realized peer pressure wouldn't silence Galileo, they turned to the Church for help. Fortunately, a good portion of the Church was behind Galileo. The head of one Jesuit college wrote to Galileo to say that his astronomers and mathematicians had confirmed his theory, but wanted more proof. Galileo's efforts were further encouraged by Pope Urban. His first trial resulted in being admonished not to teach it as fact, but was welcome to teach it as theory. Unfortunately, by the time of his second trial he had managed to alienate his support, mainly by insisting his theory be taught as fact despite a lack of evidence. One of his proofs was tides--he believed they were cause by the Earth sloshing the oceans. Galileo insisted on circular orbits, and refused to consider Kepler's calculations on elliptical orbits, which would have corrected errors he and others found in his model. He was tried a second time for teaching the theory as fact, not for teaching the theory. He was never tortured or shown a dungeon. His house arrest consisted of a five-room apartment with a servant at his disposal, and was free to roam Rome while awaiting trial. After the trial, he was released. True he was threatened with imprisonment, but at his age, Langford asserts, both he and the court officials knew it would not be carried out; the sentence would have been mitigated.

In short, Galileo and Copernicus were treated by the academia in much the same way they treat new ideas today. For an explanation of why the geo-centric theory isn't Christian in principle or origin, read Sampson's Six Modern Myths.

If you want to read about Gemini, this is by far THE book to read!. EXTREME Detail on everything Gemini, and tons and tons of fascinating photos. Highly recommended!

Gemini was an incredibly important and successful program, but unfortunately is forever cast into the shadows by the even greater achievements of Apollo. There have been several other publications written on the subject of Gemini, but most are official NASA histories that are extremely difficult (and expensive) to obtain. In this book David Shayler documents all aspects of Project Gemini from inception to conclusion. He details not only the technical aspects of the Gemini spacecraft (and spacecraft subcomponents) but discusses the development, testing, and capabilities of the Titan, Atlas, and Agena vehicles which were so crucial in obtaining program goals. Each mission is discussed in detail, and there are many illustrations (including some I have never seen anywhere else), tables, and graphs providing most any information desired.

The book is lengthy, but is never boring, and I reveled in the thorough treatment given to this crucial program, a program that truly was a giant step to the moon. My only critiques of the book are fairly miniscule. There are numerous typographical errors in the text, most of which are quite obvious, so I am rather surprised they slipped through proofreading. There are also a couple of insignificant errors in the crew biographies (notably regarding Armstrong's post-NASA teaching career) that don't dramatically detract from the book as a whole, but would be good to correct in future editions.

I highly recommend this book, and salute David Shayler for writing such an outstanding book on such a critical program.

I have always been interested in the Gemini program, yet little information seemed to exist about it. This book is incredibly comprehensive. It does not read like a novel like Andrew Chaikins, Man on the Moon. It is divided into indepth sections on the booster, the capsule, EVA, recovery, etc. Don't get me wrong, it captures the drama in each mission well but it is not always approached in a sequential manner regarding missions. It reminds me of the Apogee book series on each mission but this has all Gemini related topics rolled into one book.

If you like to read about the exact reasoning behind scrubbed launches, every success and failure related to hardware like the Ageena docing module or boosters, the issues faced on each EVA or which suit was used on which mission, how they differed and why then this is your book.

Did you ever think you could see further if you stood on the shoulders of a giant? Here's your chance. These authors have been involved with cosmological investigations for over 50 years. They explain the theory of the Big Bang for the layman but with enough detail to challenge the non-specialist. (The non-specialists will probably want to skip the appendices but if one wants to get a flavor of the deep thinking involved in Big Bang research the appendices opens that door.)

The authors are not short on details and their recollection of personal experiences during their scientific endeavors makes the book most interesting. These authors are not merely reporting on what others are doing but rather reflecting on their own personal critical investigations and presenting their opinion on subsequent research endeavors. They have been observers and critics of the evolution of cosmological investigations for essentially their whole careers. Thus they have strong opinions which are expressed unambiguously. I would expect that some would disagree with their opinions but to me this clear expression of these opinions is refreshing. But to their credit these opinions are presented clearly as their opinions so that the reader can explore the issues and disagree to their hearts content.

As a non-physicist, I had read enough to understand that the abundance of the light elements was created according to the Big Bang theory during the primeval evolution of the universe. And further that the heavier elements up to iron were created in the heart of collapsing stars but had never quite understood why this was the case. The authors discussion and presentation of data on the binding energy of the elements made this reasonably understandable to me. I mention this because I want to emphasize how the authors present a broad overview of a very complex physics problem with clear discussions but in addition give sufficient data to support understanding by the layman. Thus this book is not an easy read for the layman but rather is a challenging and invigorating experience for the amateur physicist who loves to try to understand the universe we live in.

The book includes an expert review of most of the evolving developments in the field of cosmology since their seminal work in the late forties. They present a broad overview of the concept of inflation in the early universe and express their view that this remains an open question. For those interested in the "why" question, there is a brief chapter on the Anthropic Principle. But to me it seems clear that the authors are by far more interested in the "how" issues rather than the "why" issues.

This book is by far the best overview of this subject I have ever run across.

I could say more about this book, but you might wish to read it first, along with the techincal material in the Appendix...

As with all such books, there is an error here and there, despite a gang of proofreaders unpaid by me.

If interested in the errata, please contact my son at AlpherV (aol).

Meanwhile, please enjoy one of the interesting who-did-what's of the 20th century.

If you're interested in the Big Bang, I can tell you, there is more to come. What happened before that singularity?

After the Big Bang--well, there is no better description that that written by the man who described it, who calculated all of the important equations on a slide rule! I wasn't there, but I was close--he is, after all, my father.

And, when I was ten, this very humble scientist, considered by many one of the great scientists of the 20th century, had his predictions of the cosmic blackbody background radiation confirmed by accident by two physicists working for the then Bell Labs in New Jersey. Those two men received the Nobel Prize. Not that Alpher and Herman were not nominated at times, frequently. It just so happens the Nobel is never awarde to FOUR people. Every other important Physics recognition--has gone to Alpher and Herman.

However, the most original work was from Ralph A. Alpher. A student of George Gamow, the colorful Russian physicist at George Washington University, this work was his SECOND doctoral dissertation. The solution to the problem of his first dissertaiton was published before he could defend it.

At his defense of this dissertation--there were news media, journalists, as well as his doctoral committee. It was a public event, and even the great cartoonist Herblock published a cartoon relating to the most significant cosmological PREDICTION of the 20th century, perhaps in all of Astronomy up to that time.

And that was confirmed, and as a trained scientist, I can say, that's a pretty nifty occurrence. Robert Herman, coauthor of this book, was my father's constant intellectual companion from the 1940s through the 1990s. Nonetheless, he is recognized as a coauthor, and Ralph A. Alpher would say deservedly so. I can also say, it helps to have intellectual colleagues.

I've read many, many other versions of this great story in cosmology over the years, and many of them are flatly wrong. Ralph Alpher was certainly always available to tell his story, but this book became the crowning achievement. I've read the proofs and the book itself, and I heartily endorse it, because is is a great story in science, although a bit heftier than "The Double Helix" by Watson and Crick about the race to find the code we now know as DNA.

However, on the Big Bang, there was no particular race. Yet today, we're on the verge of another great debate regarding creationism and the origin of man, and Clarence Darrow will possibly be watching in amusement. No doubt also will George Gamow. And many Nobel prize winners have had the fortunate opportunity to know my father.

Today, however, Dr. Alpher is working on that nagging question, what DID happen before the Big Bang. Being a theoretical physicist, and tending to make predictions and hypothecate (after all, the atom was long merely a hypothetical particle)...well, confirmation of what is to come may take a little time.

And, as usual, we can expect a little academic political intrigue as well. This book sets that record as clearly as anyone at the source could. And it is a work of passion, I can attest to that.

A great read for anyone who thinks about our origins and our future. Highly recommended.

The history of space activities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, America's spaceport, is as interesting as it is varied. "Go for Launch!" seeks to tell this story--already available in both scholarly and popular as well as in illustrated and textual forms--with an emphasis on photographs. At a fundamental level the "Cape," as it is universally known by those in the space community, may be as much a state of mind as it is a physical place. With high technology enterprises resting side by side with a wetlands refuge it is an eerie place, what Ann Morrow Lindbergh ironically referred to as the abode of both the "heron and the astronaut."

"Go for Launch! An Illustrated History of Cape Canaveral" is a fine attempt to capture the fifty year history of this place as the central space launch site in the United States. There are three central components to the Cape's space access efforts. The one that is best known is the Kennedy Space Center, the NASA installation that serves as the site for the preparation and launch of the nation's human spaceflight effort. The military also has a huge presence at the Cape, with Air Force and Navy facilities engaging in all manner of test and evaluation in the Eastern Test Range into the Atlantic Ocean. In recent years, finally, there has been a major effort to establish commercial space operations in the area and a growing number of non-governmental launches have been flown from the Cape. The first of all of this activity took place with the Bumper program in 1950, and the launch of Bumper 8 on July 24, 1950, established a precedent that has endured more than fifty years.

"Go for Launch!" is divided into three major parts. The first, nearly half of the book, deals with the period from 1950 through the Sputnik crisis of 1957. It relates in words and photographs the history of the military effort to establish a launch capability at the Cape and to undertake research and development on a variety of missiles and research rockets. These ranged from the ballistic missiles so well-known in history--the Atlas, Titan, Minuteman, Polaris, Trident, and Poseidon--as well as cruise missiles such as the Matador, Snark, Bomarc, and Navaho. They also included scientific rocket launches, and the construction and operation of the facilities that supported them. The authors do a good job of locating and printing in this work unique and interesting photos of these activities, many of them not well-known to the public. Indeed, many of the pages are essentially photographs with captions.

A second section relates the story of the orbital space launch era from the flight of the first U.S. orbital spacecraft, Explorer 1, launched from the Cape atop a Juno rocket on January 31, 1958, through the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986, 73 seconds into its flight. Again, the authors found interesting imagery to illustrate the work. The third section deals with the more recent era, focusing on the return to flight after the Challenger accident and the development and flight of the various types of expendable launch vehicles launched from the Cape.

While the imagery is quite adequate overall, the reader should be aware that the vast majority of it is printed in black and white with only a small color section added to the book. Accordingly, while this is an illustrated history, if one approaches it seeking the splashy design of a "coffee table" book disappointment is assured. A better work of that type is David West Reynolds' "Kennedy Space Center: Gateway to Space" (Firefly Books, 2006), even though it does not treat in any detail the military aspects of the story and has several glaring errors of fact. What "Go for Launch!" does well is collect in one place a large number of interesting and helpful photographs of more interest to the specialist, perhaps, than the casual reader. Additionally, if one seeks a complex historical analysis of the history of space launch facilities at the Cape this is not the best book. Instead, a superb analysis may be found in "A History of the Kennedy Space Center" by Kenneth Lipartito and Orville R. Butler (University Press of Florida, 2007). "Go for Launch!" fills a key niche in the effort to understand the history of the Cape. It does not stand alone as the only work on the subject that interested readers will want to consult.

I- like many of you have collected the photo books and histories of Cape Canaveral(or Cape Kennedy). When I first saw this title- I thought "not the same old photos again"

Boy- was I wrong!

This book is great. Joel Powell and Art LeBrun have created an excellent guide to the history of Kennedy Space center. From Bumper V-2 to Delta IV and Atlas V. It shows the early missiles like Bull Goose and even this years Pluto Express launch. There are 17 pages of photos from "incidents and accidents" alone.

Photos of lore - like Gordo Cooper holding up his atlas rocket(page195) and Snark infested waters.The recovery of Gemini-5's Titan rocket from the Atlantic(pg.145)and the strange tale of John Glenn's Atlas rocket(pg.174 and 194)photo tours today of the first launch sites and the latest sites.
I heartily recommend this one!
This is what Apogee does best!

Space became the ultimate frontier and the battleground of the superpowers during the fifties. The fight was hard, but, happily, it was not won or lost by piling up heaps of dead bodies and dispatching hordes of mutilated veterans home from the fields of conflict, but by imaginative brainpower, engineering ingenuity and perseverance, and, of course, organizing all the fiscal and industrial resources available. Not everything happened at Cape Canaveral, but much of the drama happened there and therefrom. Here we are presented with wiews of it all, from the breadboard "bunker" and painter's scaffolding Gantry of the first Bumper-Wac launches in 1950, to the burgeoning Missile Rows and Skid Strip stretching along the shores of the Snark-infested Waters, and further to the giant constructions needed to launch giants like Titan-III and Saturn-I and V, which was the instrument of slamming the door of the Space Race to the Moon shut on the nose of the Russians. Many important battles of the Cold War were fought and won at "the Cape", but sure enough, during that conflict the tools of Space Exploration and Space Utilization were forged. Nowadays many of these installations serve new and exiting launchers with commercially important or scientifically intriguing missions. Joel W Powell is an inspiring guide to the once, now and future Cape. My reaction to his book was: "Did that, too, happened there?" Well, it did.

The book DOES NOT tell you how to operate the software that comes with it, it's more of a bible for ANY type astrophotography which happens to include the best darn software for image processing you could find. Just don't confuse the two. Even if you have image processing software now you NEED this book!

As others have mentioned, this is not a manual for the well-regarded AIP4WIN software. It is much more than that. It explains the theory behind the software in terms of the processing of astronomical images. In that respect you are going to run into much of the same material you would encounter in Gonzales and Woods' Digital Image Processing, just from a different perspective. It would probably be good if you already know the basics of image processing from a book like Gonzalez and Woods before reading this one. This book's primary aim is not explaining DIP, but explaining how it is used to perform the processing of astronomical images. The following is the table of contents of the book and each chapter's summary.

Basic imaging: How the light that falls on your CCD becomes an image. Covers image formation, cameras, telescopes, detectors, sensor geometry, image capture, field of view, and angluar coverage.

Counting Photons: "Astronomy is about counting photons...." Covers signal, noise, the signal-to-noise ratio, the Poisson and Gaussian distributions and why they matter, making better pictures by summing images, and how dark frames and flat frames effect the signal and noise in your images.

Digital Image Formats: Covers the file formats that astronomers use, including FITS, TIFF, BMP, and JPEG. Learn file format basics, how your image data is arranged inside the file on your computer's hard disk.

Imaging Tools: All about sensors, optics, cameras, and telescopes. Explains how to calculate the field of view and resolution of your system, telescope optics for imagers, auxiliary optics, mounts, drives, tracking, filters, and how to recognize and correct common equipment problems.

Imaging Techniques: Good equipment is just part of the story. Covers the techniques that experienced imagers use to obtain high-quality images. Includes polar alignment, good guiding, critical focus, correct exposure, darks and flats, light boxes, and special considerations for DSLR cameras.

Image Calibration: Examines the details of image calibration. All about bias, dark noise, flat-fielding, standard and scalable darks, cosmic rays, making master dark frames, flats, standard calibration protocols, and defect mapping and correction.

Image Analysis: Locked within the numerical values that make up a calibrated CCD image is a staggering amount of information. Covers pixel coordinates, pixel value, image statistics, the image histogram, feature analysis, the centroid, distances, and image profiles.

Measuring CCD Performance: How to measure the performance of your CCD camera. Discusses goals in measuring CCD performance, how to shoot test images, and the determination of bias level, dark current, gain, linearity, and readout noise.

Astrometry: Asteroid hunters measure the postions of new-found objects using astrometry. Covers the theory behind finding right ascension and declination from a CCD image, practical astrometry, and the uses of astrometry.

Photometry: Amateur observers now work side by side with professional astronomers to measure the variations of variable stars, supernovae, asteroids, and comets using the CCD to capture precise measures of brightness.

Spectroscopy: An emerging area for amateus astronomers brought to you by the CCD camera. Covers spectra and spectrographs, gratings, prisms, slit- and slitless systems, and the properties and meaning of stellar spectra.

Geometric Transforms: Covers translation, rotation, scaling, flipping, cropping, floating, and resampling. Demystifies the basic geometric operations used in astronomical image processing.

Point Operations: Learn how software converts the pixel values your CCD camera captures into the sparkling images you see in popular magazines and amateur websites. Remapping, transfer functions, linear, log, and exponential scalings explained. Covers endpoint specification and histogram specification.

Linear Operators: All about one of the most useful tools in the amateur astronomer's digital toolbox. Describes how digital convolution performs crispening, sharpening, smoothing. Learn about low-pass and high-pass kernels, Sobel, Kirsch, and Prewitt operators, and that most useful of linear tools: the unsharp mask.

Non-Linear Operators: Non-linear operators perform useful services like cleaning up noisy images. Cover rank-order processes, the median filter, local adaptive sharpening, noise filters, and morphological operators.

Image Operations: Multi-image operations are the basic tool for making superior astro-images. Covers image math, median-combine stacking, image registration, blinking, and track-and-stack image summing.

Images in Frequency Space: Unlocks the mysteries of the Fourier Transform and image processing in the spatial frequency domain. These powerful techniques used by profession astronomers are now accessible to amateurs

Wavelets: Explores the hottest new image processing and restoration techniques. Covers the wavelet transform, the inverse wavelet transform, spatial filtering, the wavelet noise filter, and iterative filtering techniques.

Deconvolution: Deconvolution attempts to restore images degraded by a turbulent atmosphere, poor telescope optics, and tracking errors. Discusses algorithms used to sharpen Hubble Space Telescope images, how they work, and how amateurs can use them.

Building Color Images: You've seen fantastic astro-images on the web and in popular magazines and books. Learn how astronomers capture and build color images from multiple exposures through different color filters. Covers the colors of astronomical objects, luminace, chrominance, color space, white balance, G2V stars, RGB and LRGB color image capture.

Processing Color Images: The digital SLR camera has done much to bring color imaging to the average amateur astronomer. Explains the Bayer array, color image bit depth, noise, dark current, vignetting, calibration, image stacking, and luminace enhancement techniques

I participated in a beta test of the photometry software program and proof-read a draft of this excellent book. The book alone is worth the price, but the amazing value is the powerful software package included, AIP4WIN. It does so many image processing tasks- photometry, astrometry, spectroscopy, color pictures, image sharpening - with several deconvolution routines. This is much more than a toy (but you certainly can have fun with it) as it supports routine image processing of hundreds of images per night. The software alone is worth several times the price of the book. Anyone interested in putting a CCD camera to serious work - or serious fun - will certainly get their money's worth with this package! Berry and Burnell have a really excellent effort here.

5 Stars! A Hundred Thumbs up! Teaches a wonderful lesson about the essential Truth of things. A great lesson and highly provoking thoughts for adults too, not just kids! And then together with the magical illustrations of Phil Travers ( Of Moody Blues fame! ), makes for quite a highly educational, thought provoking and magical adventure - indeed! 5 Stars! More!

Do you have a special child or grandchild in your life? If so this is a book designed for them to learn about their own personal magical universe. Before you give it to them though, I would suggest that you read it yourself.

The author has discovered a way to present complex subject matter in a manner that everyone can understand. It is easy to see that she is speaking from the heart on a subject that is very near and dear to her.

I am thrilled to have read the book and to pass it along to a special child in my life.

A truly wonderful romp! A great lesson for adults, not just kids! Answers to our searchings of how life and the universe works. Quite educational, and coupled with the colorful illustrations of Phil Travers ( Of Moody Blues Fame! ), make it a MAGICAL Universe Indeed! Highly recomended!

I have the book and have taken the class with Dr. Malphrus. Both were extremely "Ben"eficial to my physics eduacation. This book is interesting on both the historical and scientific level. An excellent view into an evolving science.

We haven't really read the book but we're students of his and we love him. He's an awesome guy. GO DOC!

This book offers an excellent look into the history and making of the science we now know as radio astronomy. Dr. Malphrus' book is also easy to understand, you need not be a physics major to make sense of the science he discusses. A great book for a interesting look into the once invisible world of radio astronomy.

I found this book to be very informative, up to date, and could be understood by the layman

This book sets out the evidence for missing matter in the universe in an entertaining yet thorough way. There is virtually no math in the entire book, and yet each subject area is treated fully. I had thought the first evidence for dark matter was star rotation rates in galaxies as set out by Vera Rubin and others. However this book traces the roots of the "something is wrong with our picture of the universe" back to the 1930s and Fritz Zwicky and Jan Oort--two astronomers who could not be more different from each other. And that is another strength of this book--we learn something about Zwicky and Oort without being seriously sidetracked.

"In Search of Dark Matter" strikes a perfect balance between moving the story along (and it does read like a story) and stopping here and there for brief asides about the personalities and milieu involved at the various stages of dark matter research. Finally, alternatives such as MOND theory are discussed. This book is not a deep tome--it is only roughly 150 pages. But it certainly piqued my interest and made me want to find out more. The authors succeed in bringing up most topics assuming little or no background in astronomy, yet don't get mired explaining the basics. A great read!

The book is very well organized and enjoyable to read. Well done!

In this densely written book, Heidelberg University professor Peter Ulmschneider covers a remarkably wide range of questions related to extraterrestrial life and intelligence, and does so with convincing authority. His work, part of Springer's Physics and Astronomy series, has the flavor of a university textbook, with numerous graphs, tables, and diagrams, and a few equations. Readers will need either a basic knowledge of science or a willingness to learn while reading.

Part I, about planets, discusses the origin of chemical elements, planet formation, the search for extrasolar planets, and planets suitable for life. Part II, about life, begins at the most basic level of organic chemistry, then moves on to a condensed discussion of biological evolution on Earth. A much briefer chapter provides a quick overview of the search for extraterrestrial life. Part III, on intelligence, takes an unusual approach by beginning with the future of Humankind, emphasizing human expansion into the solar system and possible threats to our survival. Ulmschneider argues that, by thinking about our own future development, we can gain insights into the nature of extraterrestrial intelligence. He concludes his book with a discussion of extraterrestrial intelligent life, briefly noting some of the proposed explanations for the Fermi Paradox.

This book is not for casual readers. Because it covers so much territory, the discussions are highly condensed. Nonetheless, Ulmschneider has done an impressvie job. The book includes some small but well-reproduced colored pictures.

I truly enjoyed reading this book. It is carefully written, has an enormous amount of up-to-date information, and covers the subject reasonably well. Astrobiology is a relatively new subject, and this is one of the best books about it. I was very impressed by the amount of material Ulmschneider was able to cover in only 250 pages and how clearly he explained everything. He went through the origin of the chemical elements, planet formation, the threat of planetary migration, the search for extrasolar planets, planetary atmospheric instabilities, theories on the origin of life on Earth, the evolution of life, the threats to the Earth's environment from the existence of life (such as the Huronic glaciation), the search for extraterrestrial life, and much more. That included some speculative material, some of which I found dubious. But that does not detract from the overall value of this book.

This book was so dense with information and so elegantly organized that I found it easier than most recreational reading I do these days. The author explains how one might answer what I consider to be the ultimate question: Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? The author refrains from pontificating his own opinion, but rather provides the background information necessary for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. The basics of planetary science, astrophysics, and biology are presented in the first section, followed by a description of the conditions in which life has evolved, and where elsewhere in the universe we might find such conditons. Part three (the section that I found to be the most fascinating) described the nature of intelligent life and the fate of humanity. As a student studying astrobiology, I found that this book did an amazing job of unifying many of the classes I have taken, and painted a very good picture of Astrobiology as a sigle subject. I would recommend the book to anyone intersted in astrobiology, space exploration, or the future of mankind. The material presented was sufficiently detailed for a student to gain insight, yet presented in such a simple manner that even the casual reader would walk away with and understanding of the contents.