Hi
Yesterday my wife, bless her cotton socks, returned from a shopping expedition with a surprise book for me, “The Handy Space Answer Book”. First published in 1998 its probably not bleeding edge stuff. The price was marked down to only $9.95 at Borders in Brisbane.
600 pages
220 photos
7.25" x 9.25" paperback
5th printing
Foreword by Dr. Neil Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium.
Some details from:
http://www.visibleink.com/title.php?id=28
“With astronomers able to peer ever deeper into space, discoveries that fundamentally change our understanding of the universe continue to accelerate. Dark energy is the new anti-gravity, and strange cosmic explosions don't behave according to theory. The future is now. Find out why, in spite of gravity, the universe appears to be expanding, what happened during the big bang, why Pluto is maybe not a bona-fide planet (particularly in Manhattan), and answers to 1,200 other very interesting questions in The Handy Space Answer Book. Just what is a light year? Why is gazing across the universe like looking back into time? What are the chances of having your day ruined by a bombardment of space debris? An easy-to-use general reference for anyone seeking to satisfy their heavenly curiosity or improve their space literacy, it tackles hundreds of technical concepts--space-time continuum, quasars, pulsars, neutron stars, black holes, white dwarfs, dark matter, red giants, supernovas, cosmic strings, bright nebula, neutrinos, interstellar gas, spiral galaxies, planetary motion, solar flares--in everyday language accompanied by a bevy of illustrations. Handy Space also covers cosmology through the ages, profiles major astronomers and physicists, describes major observatories, tours the local solar system and galaxy, and details the history of space exploration”.
I’ll probably leave this book lying around at work to attract the attention of colleagues who may have a casual interest in astronomy. It will probably also be useful as a resource for generating a list of questions for our club’s annual astro-quiz, as well as the SE Qld intra-club astro-quiz.
Oh, and when not cruising through IIS and the www, I’ll probably even flick through its pages on those cloudy nights.
Cheers
Dennis
