by J. Kelly Beatty, Carolyn Collins Petersen, Andrew L. Chaikin

isbn: 0521645875
subject: Nonfiction, General Science
finished: 3/23/2000

Typically there is a lot of media buzz during the active parts of a planetary science mission -- things are landing, new pictures are arriving, NASA officials are beaming, and everybody is excited. Then the buzz dies down and scientists get to work figuring out what they learned; in subsequent months and years the results are published in scientific journals that are not particularly accessible to the general public. At least, that's how I thought it worked until I ran across The New Solar System. This is a wonderful book, sort of a cross between a textbook and a coffee table book; it contains lots of pretty pictures and the writing is about at the level of a typical article in Scientific American. Each chapter was written by a specialist in an area and describes some facet of the solar system, such as the sun, the interiors of the giant planets, or the role of collisions in the history of the solar system.

I was surprised not only by the wide variety of strange objects and phenomena in the solar system, but also by how much knowledge about them scientists have been able to put together using the scant data that telescopes and space probes give us. Planetary science is fascinating, and this book is a great way to learn about it; I highly recommend it.