The Grand Tour: A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System
by Ron Miller, William K. Hartmann
Book Summary Information
Author: Ron Miller, William K. HartmannEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-05-23
ISBN: 0761135472
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Book Reviews of The Grand Tour: A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System
Book Review: Grab Your Ticket and Take the Grand Tour...
Summary: 5 Stars
Quite a few astronomy books have a tendency to be either dry and boring or so technically advanced that they are beyond the grasp of the casual folks interested in space topics. NOT THIS ONE! The Grand Tour: A Traveler's Guide to The Solar System is a brilliantly fresh and exciting book full of engaging commentary and breath-taking photos, illustrations, and art. In every sense, it is a grand tour! It's entertainment and education wrapped into one power-package.
For those interested in and / or beginning study in comparative planetology, this is an excellent primer, chock full of lots of foundation concepts. For those teaching solar system science, this is a must have resource! For librarians, this is a jewel for your collection! For artists and art-lovers who enjoy space themes, this book presents some fantastic material. For extremely advanced astro-folks, this book may not fully satisfy the hard-core science-minded, but hopefully, they can appreciate its value in generating excitement for space topics and exploration.
I knew when I saw the book's cover I was in for a real treat--a holiday in the solar system, and I wasn't disappointed. A big fan of the Red Planet Mars, I was especially interested in the Tour's Mars commentary and images. I agree with the author's opening comments about the red planet: "Mars is unchallenged as the planet of intrigue. Rover's have crawled its surface, robotic arms have reached out and analyzed its minerals, and orbiters have sent back data from overhead--and Mars just continues to grow more fascinating and provocative, in terms of its possible similarities to Earth-like conditions" (84). I absolutely love the eerie, other-worldly space art view of Mars from its moon Deimos, page 85. The section called "Phobos and Deimos: Moonlets of Mars" is very impressive (pages 248-253).
Other note worthy illustrations (I offer descriptive labels here for your information. In the book, the author comments on the images in well-placed captions) are the following:
"Pluto eclipsing the Sun as viewed from Charon" page 3 / space art
"Saturn seen from Rhea" page 34/ space art
"Ribbon like Clouds" page 36 / Voyager photo
"Magnificent View of Saturn by Cassini Spacecraft" page 37 / photo
"Saturn's Rings as possibly viewed from its atmosphere" page 39 / space art
"Titan illustrated--then and now" page 117 / space art
This tour is well-worth the "ticket" price, and you don't even have to pack! :)
Summary of The Grand Tour: A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System
Anyone with a little extra cash and a plane ticket can take a "grand tour" of Europe. But a tour of the Solar System? Now that's an experience deserving of the word grand. Introducing the new edition of the book praised as "spectacular" (London Times), "eye-boggling" (Future Life),"concise and informative . . . the colorful and imaginative paintings steal the show" (Chicago Tribune), with "page after page filled with new color paintings, each the well-controlled evocation of a spectacular scene" (Scientific American).Originally published in 1981 and revised in 1993, The Grand Tour, an astronomy classic with 196,000 copies in print, takes readers on an imaginative trip through every corner of the solar system, in much the same way as Cook's once took travelers on a grand tour of the Continent.Completely updated and revised and drawing on discoveries made by Voyager I and II, Magellan, Galileo, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars Global Surveyor Mission and other space initiatives, The Grand Tour is a dazzling journey that combines lush art and up-to-the-minute science. One hundred new paintings give travelers an unprecedented view of phenomena such as Saturn's rings from Saturn itself; the rusty-red dune fields of Mars; the rugged surface of Mercury, saturated with impact craters; and the Kuiper Belt of planetesimals, the largest of which is Pluto-now considered a half-planet. From the vast reaches of Jupiter to tiny frozen Rhea, like a snowball orbiting around Saturn, it is a journey of astonishing proportions.
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