Posted on Friday, January 23, 2015
Solar
System Astrophysics: Background Science and the Inner Solar System
by Eugene F. Milone and William J. F. Wilson
Astrophysics
is a fascinating science that seeks to explain how planets and stars form,
evolve, interact and move and as such uses observations to find out more about
the Universe we live in. In general astrophysics textbooks the reader would
encounter almost all of the topics that are covered in “Solar System
Astrophysics”, with the difference that our familiar Solar system and in this
volume, the inner solar system in particular is looked at more closely and in
more detail.
This volume
deals with our closest neighbourhood in space – the other rocky planets – Mars,
Venus and Mercury, and not forgetting our own planet Earth and also with our
Sun and other objects that are quite near the Sun. In addition to the detailed
look at the different objects, one also leaves the book with an understanding
of the physical laws governing our Solar system and of-course other star
systems as well.
In the
beginning of the book, the reader can renew their acquaintance with spherical
astronomy and celestial mechanics – the necessary basics for any textbook on
astrophysics. It then goes on with the Sun, terrestrial planets and their
characteristics with a look on the Earth and Moon system and continuing with
Mercury, Venus and Mars.
In a way
the book is surprising in its depth and richness of detail – of-course you
would expect to find the data on the size of the Sun – it’s mass and
circumference and what not, but in this book, instead of giving it in a table
form, you can read about how these numbers are arrived at, and what and whose
research they have been based on – it’s something really useful and very
interesting.
As a
textbook I found it excellent. Although I’ve taken master’s level courses on
astronomy at the university there was a lot of interesting content, and what I
loved the most, were the “Challenges” at the end of each chapter – mostly problems
where you need to calculate something or derive an equation. However the
Challenges are set so that you actually want to do them, and for example figure
out how fast the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor was going when it exploded. Also just
the detail of calling them “Challenges” instead of “Problems” makes them a lot
more appealing.
If you want
a detailed account of the inner solar system, I think this is the book to dive
into.
Labels: astrophysics, book review, earth, mars, mercury, moon, Planets, solar sustem, sun, venus