PLANETS 

by Dr. Mark Chartrand

= Reviewed by Allen Yu =

The book "Planets" from St. Martin’s Press, 1990, may come out a bit too outdated for this time being, but still a worthy reference guide for ordinary students who will be needing a good research material for their curriculum, and rough but adequate observing aids for aspiring amateurs. Typically, a simple book like this would give adequate descriptive notes about the planets, its composition and history, along with its mythological connection, and the author has delivered the goods well. It even goes to the extent of detailing the known satellites in our solar system, and ends with a very limited but useful bibliography. I especially liked the illustrations on how the Earth dance with the zodiacs, and also a definitive picture of why the Moon exhibits different phases. Other than that, perhaps a few important things note worthy of mentioning were missed: it may give the student an edge in the classroom by introducing the Oort Cloud of comets, and the Kuiper belt objects, which I still personally regard as general information.

Just like any astronomy book, Dr. Mark Chartrand would encourage his readers to step outdoors and observe the planets, thereby introducing practical astronomy as well. But the book took great efforts in presenting the planetary distance table. I’m not sure how it will help in observing, but the author may expect the reader to derive that the shorter the distance of a planet to the Earth, the brighter and bigger the planet should appear to us earthlings, and this is not always the case. (Jupiter is bigger and brighter than Mars, but it is farther.) It would be helpful to include an explanation of magnitudes (brightness that is) and apparent disk size. Distance alone is visually insignificant to an observer, but brightness and apparent disk size makes the difference (though they are related theoretically).

Last but not the least, a method on how to observe the Sun and sunspots is included. It would be worthwhile to mention another potential pitfall to the uninformed amateur: DISCARD any eyepiece screw-in solar filter that comes with any telescope. The concentrated beam focused by the main objective of a telescope will soon break the eyepiece lens and the filter as well, and will burn your eye if your lucky enough to take a peek at that moment. The book did mentioned an aperture filter (filter put in front of the objective lens) as the proper way of cutting down intense light from the sun, though it puzzled me why it did not include this precautionary warning.

 Back   

For Comments administrator@astroleaguephils.org