Kenneth R. Lang produced this richly illustrated book with full-color images in 2011. The book is a comprehensive, up-to-date description of the planets, their moons, and recent exoplanet discoveries. The second edition of this classic reference is brought up-to-date with the fascinating new discoveries made during recent years from 12 new solar system missions. Representative examples include water on the Moon; widespread volcanism on Mercury’s previously unseen half; vast buried glaciers on Mars; geysers on Saturn’s active water moon Enceladus; lakes of methane and ethane on Saturn’s moon Titan; the encounter with asteroid Itokawa; and an encounter and sample return from comet Wild 2.
The book is further enhanced by hundreds of striking new images of the planets and moons. Written at an introductory level appropriate for high-school and undergraduate students, it provides fresh insights that appeal to anyone with an interest in planetary science. A website hosted by the author contains all of the images in the book with an overview of their importance. A link to this can be found at www.cambridge.org/solarsystem/ .
Dr. Lang is a Professor of Astronomy at Tufts University. He is a well-known author and has published 25 books. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Sun (Cambridge
University Press, 2001) was recommended by the Library Journal as one of the best reference books published that year. He has extensive teaching experience, and has served as a Visiting Senior Scientist at NASA Headquarters.
Dr. Lang concluded the book by stating that the detection of a potentially habitable planet orbiting a nearby star, coupled with radial velocity surveys of Sun-like stars in the immediate solar neighborhood, suggests that Earth-size exoplanets are common, outnumbering large exoplanets just as sand and small pebbles are more frequent than rocks at the ocean shore. Our Milky Way galaxy is probably teeming with potentially habitable planets located at the right distance to have water and with the right mass to hold an atmosphere. That doesn’t mean that they are inhabited with any plant or animal life, but they could be.
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