Author: Katrina Cain

Book review by David L. Hamilton

Jeffery Bennett’s Max Goes to the Space Station is the newest addition to the series A Science Adventure with Max the Dog. This series introduces children ages 4 to 12 to the exciting world of scientific thinking through adventurous story telling featuring a lovable and intelligent dog named Max. Max Goes to the Space Station also includes age appropriate suggested activities spanning grades 1 through 8.

This book uses words and illustrations to tell the exciting tale of Max the dog and his journey to the International Space Station, his adventures while on the station and his return home to his family. The main story is written so that younger children can follow along with Max and his adventures while also providing a “Big Kid Box” on each page for the older children. A “Big Kid Box” is a text box on each page that has more in-depth information for older children. At the back of the book are suggested activities for children in the first grade through the eighth grade. Max Goes to the Space Station is one of the many books included in the Stories from Space program. In this program, astronauts read a book from space while on the International Space Station. This year; 2014, astronauts are scheduled to read this book as well as other books from the series.

Universe Today and Big Kid Science are pleased to be able to offer two free copies of Max Goes to the Space Station to our readers. This contest is open to US and Canadian residents only. In order to be entered into the giveaway drawing, just put your email address into the box at the bottom of this post (where it says “Enter the Giveaway”) before Tuesday, March 24th. If this is the first time you’re registering for a giveaway, you’ll receive a confirmation email immediately where you’ll need to click a link to be entered into the drawing. For those who have registered previously, you’ll receive an email later where you can enter this drawing.

Max Goes to the Space Station and other books in this series are available on Amazon.com.

Max Goes to the Space Station A Science Adventure with Max the Dog [Hardcover] by Jeffery Bennett Illustrated. 32 Pages. Big Kid Science

About the author and illustrator:

Jeffrey Bennett is an astrophysicist and educator who proposed the idea for and helped develop the Voyage Scale Model Solar System—the first science-oriented exhibit approved for permanent installation on the National Mall in Washington, DC. In addition to writing the Science Adventures with Max the Dog series, he is the lead author of best selling college textbooks in astronomy, mathematics, statistics and astrobiology, as well as of critically acclaimed books for the general public. He lives with his family in Boulder, Colorado. Michael Carroll is a renowned space artist, a fellow of the International Association of Astronomical Artists, and a recipient of the Lucien Rudaux award for lifetime achievement in the astronomical arts. His work has been featured at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the National Air and Space Museum; in National Geographic, Smithsonian and Time; and on NOVA. He is also the illustrator of Max Goes to Jupiter. He lives in Littleton, Colorado.

About the reviewer:

David and his wife live in Conway, Arkansas. They are amateur astronomers that love spending nights stargazing and their days working in Higher Education. David graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a Master of Education degree.

On July 23rd, 2012, Sally Ride died. As the first American woman in space and a true icon of the modern scientific era, her loss was felt all over the world. President Barack Obama said, “Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model. She inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars.” Ride’s, well, ride into space was wonderfully inspiring, but how many Americans ever read of Kathryn D. Sullivan, Anna Lee Fisher, or the dozens of other American women in space? Outside of space enthusiasts, few people know that the first woman in space was actually a Russian cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, who visited the cosmos nearly 20 years before Ride! While Mae Jemison has reached international fame as a physician and the first African American women in space, few know of the African American women who came after her.

Thanks to our natural, but foolish, inclination to focus on “firsts” and benchmarks as if collecting trivia, it’s elusively easy to believe that these two or three women mentioned in our high-school science texts are the definitive ‘women of space’ and that’s that.

Hardly.

As accomplished author Karen Bush Gibson shows in her latest book, Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions, and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, space is certainly not an all boy’s club. Throughout the just over 200-page book, Gibson relates the successes and setbacks of nearly two dozen women from ten different countries who made history and forged a path for countless females to follow. Gibson’s book features photographs and nods to access additional learning resources, valuable for any interested reader in showing that this book is truly only just scratching the surface of women’s enormous impact on spaceflight.

Studies seem to pour in almost daily stating that the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields are increasingly male-dominated, so it’s refreshing to read about the women who overcame the stereotypes and prejudices and dared to go where so few had gone before. Gibson’s book offers an informative, introductory overview of a group of unfortunately under-appreciated heroes – as well as an exhilarating perspective which emphasizes that there is so much more to come.

You can buy a copy of Women in Space from Amazon.com or visit the Chicago Review Press.

Universe Today and Chicago Review Press are pleased to be able to offer two free copies of Women in Space to our readers. In order to be entered into the giveaway drawing, just put your email address into the box at the bottom of this post (where it says “Enter the Giveaway”) before Wednesday. February 26. If this is the first time you’re registering for a giveaway, you’ll receive a confirmation email immediately where you’ll need to click a link to be entered into the drawing. For those who have registered previously, you’ll receive an email later where you can enter this drawing.

Annalee Newitz, Science editior, Science Fiction author and Editor-in-chief of IO9 is offering one, free, autographed copy of her book, ‘Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans will Survive a Mass Extinction.”

Now, I like post apocalyptic disaster porn as much as the next guy, but this book offers something that most of the other books, shows or movies do not to the hungry reader: hope. If human folly is one of the potential causes of the downfall of our civilization, then human ingenuity can be its saviour. This book describes both on planet, and off planet ideas that can make sure man (as a species, not a gender :)) lives to see another millennium.

About Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz is the founder and editor-in-chief of io9. Read more about her here.

Scatter, Adapt and Remember is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Universe Today and Annalee Newitz are offering one free copy to win. In order to be entered into the giveaway drawing, just put your email address into the box at the bottom of this post (where it says “Enter the Giveaway”) before Tuesday, December 31st, 2013. We’ll send you a confirmation email, so you’ll need to click that to be entered into the drawing.

Book review by David L. Hamilton

Tom Jackson’s Physics: An Illustrated History of the Foundations of Science is an enjoyable read for anyone who is fascinated by the world in which we live and curious about how the world works. Reading and comprehension of the material does not require one to have a background in physics or science. Jackson takes 100 important events that occurred throughout different periods in our history and presents them in such a way that they can be understood and enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds. Each event covers about a page and each page has beautiful illustrations and diagrams of the various tools of the trade that the physicists used in each of the 100 breakthroughs.

The book is divided into five sections ranging from antiquity to modern physics. The first section, The Dawn of Science, covers the important figures that set the stage for scientific inquiry for the next several centuries, such as Thales, Democritus, and Aristotle.

The second section, The Scientific Revolution, introduces us to Newton and his Laws of Motionand Theories of Light, John Dalton and his investigations into the characteristics of gases, and Thomas Seebeck and his discovery of the thermoelectric effect.The third section of Jackson’s book examines the Doppler effect, Absolute Temperature, and the discovery of X-Rays, all extremely important discoveries that are still relevant in the various branches of science today, such as astronomy and medicine.

The fourth section brings the reader into the subatomic age where contributions from Titians such as Max Planck and his Constant, Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity, and Dane Niels Bohr who gave us Bohr’s Model of an atom.

The fifth and final section of the book covers modern physics. Jackson does a great job of explaining how Slipher, Hubble, and Georges Lemaitre used Einstein’s theory of relativity to show that our universe is not static and eternal but an expanding, changing and evolving universe that had a beginning. In this final section, the reader will also learn about Quarks, Neutrinos, Dark matter and energy, and the famous Higgs boson.

Another great feature about this book is that it includes a foldout timeline that puts the people and their discoveries into the larger contexts of World events so that the reader can see the big picture more easily.

Universe Today and Shelter Harbour Press is offering free copies to two lucky winners. In order to be entered into the giveaway drawing, just put your email address into the box at the bottom of this post (where it says “Enter the Giveaway”) before Thursday, December 26th, 2013. We’ll send you a confirmation email, so you’ll need to click that to be entered into the drawing.

David and his wife live in Conway, Arkansas. They are amateur astronomers that love spending nights stargazing and their days working in Higher Education. David graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a Master of Education degree.

We have another book review and giveaway for you! Just in time for the holidays.

Book review by David Dehetre of Universe Today.

Astronomy Photographer of the Year Collection 2 is a large format, glossy book that covers the Royal Observatory at Greenwich’s annual Astrophotography competition. It covers Earth and Space, Our Solar System, Deep Space, Young Astronomy Photographer, People and Space, Best Newcomer, and Robotic Scope from 2009 to 2012. It also includes a brief how-to primer on astrophotography which, while fine, seemed perfunctory and tacked on.

The book is organized by years and category, with nice double page section breaks with clear, detailed info alongside each image; however, within each year, the categories aren’t delineated, either through typographic means, such as headers or section breaks, or through any indication alongside the images themselves. Usually the category was obvious enough, but it was somewhat confusing at times. Each category contains images by the winner, runner-up, and sometimes one or more ‘highly-commended’ entrants. Some categories also had other images without any designation of why they were included. This could be a typographic omission of some sort, or it could be that they were just additional entrants worthy of inclusion.

I was happy to see the consistently high caliber of work that came out of the competition. There isn’t one image in the book that was less than outstanding. I’ve spent many a night far out in the countryside doing astrophotography as a hobby, and I’ve never come up with an image to compare.

I was also happy to see the competition segmented into subject areas as well as the more expected age/experience categories. This seems to acknowledge that there are different metrics and merit for the broad scope of styles/subjects in astrophotography.

One other point worth mentioning is I found many of the astrophotographers presented were people I was already familiar with, some from Flickr, some from You Tube, and some from periodicals like Sky at Night. I knew these people, and not because they produced and continue to produce great images, but because they are some of the people I learned astrophotography from thus illustrating one of the great underlying aspects of astrophotography: that it is collaborative in nature. I find it heartening that the people who share the most, who help others and communicate, seem to be the ones who do the best work and are the most successful.

I’m of two minds about Astronomy Photographer of the Year though. On the one hand, it’s very well done, beautiful, and stunning: really everything a person could ask for in a book on this subject. At the same time, however, it is trying to document something that is bigger and richer than can be captured in a book.

While the images are flawlessly presented, they lack the backlit brilliance provided by a computer screen, and they aren’t zoomable to view fine details. Many astrophotography images are available on-line at resolutions equivalent to wall-size if they were printed out.

There is also the problem of completeness. While the book is cover-to-cover with great images, in large part it is singular images from outstanding photographers who have dozens or hundreds of stunning images on-line. I found myself flipping a few pages at a time, and then being overcome with a desire to go search out a photographer’s other images. This is perhaps an inevitable outcome of the fact that the competition was conducted on-line (via Flickr), so it’s hard to see it as a negative.

All in all, it really is a fantastic book and I love having it on my shelf that I often randomly flip through to find myself getting inspired, but I don’t think I would have searched it out for that purpose, and I’m not sure who the target customer is supposed to be. It seems incomplete and cursory, especially in the technical details, for someone already involved with the hobby and yet it has a price tag and scope that seems inconsistent with an introductory level book. It would make a great addition to a library collection.

One lucky Universe Today reader will win a free copy of this beautiful book. Here is how:

In order to be entered into the giveaway drawing, just put your email address into the box at the bottom of this post (where it says “Enter the Giveaway”) before Tuesday, December 10th, 2013. We’ll send you a confirmation email, so you’ll need to click that to be entered into the drawing.

Don’t want to wait to see if you won? This title is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Universe Today and Royal Observatory Greenwich are pleased to offer one free copy of Astronomy Photographer of the Year: Collection Two!

Universe Today Review by Dave Dehetre

Astronomy Photographer of the Year is a large format glossy book that covers the Royal Observatory, Greenwich’s annual astrophotography competition. It covers the competition years from 2009 to 2012 and subject categories: Earth and Space, Our Solar System, Deep Space, Young Astronomy Photographer, People and Space, Best Newcomer, and Robotic Scope. It also includes a brief how-to primer on astrophotography which, while fine, seemed perfunctory and tacked on.

The book is organized by years and then by category, with nice double page section breaks and clear detailed info alongside each image. However, within each year, the categories aren’t delineated, either through typographic means, such as headers or section breaks, or through any indication alongside the images themselves. Usually the category was obvious enough, but it was somewhat confusing at times. Each category contains images by the winner, runner-up, and sometimes one or more ‘highly-commended’ entrants. Some categories also had other images without any designation of why they were included. This could be a typographic omission of some sort, or it could be that they were just additional entrants worthy of inclusion.

I was happy to see the consistently high caliber of work that came out of the competition. There isn’t one image in the book that was less than outstanding. I’ve spent many a night far out in the countryside doing astrophotography as a hobby, and I’ve never come up with an image to compare.

I was also happy to see the competition segmented into subject areas as well as the more expected age/experience categories. This seems to acknowledge that there are different metrics and merit for the broad scope of styles/subjects in astrophotography.

One other point worth mentioning is that I found that many of the astrophotographers presented were people I was already familiar with, some from Flickr, some from Youtube, and some from periodicals like Sky at Night. I knew these people, and not because they produce great images, but because they are some of the people I learned astrophotography from. I think this points out one of the great underlying aspects of astrophotography: that it is collaborative in nature. And I find it heartening that the people who share the most, who help others and communicate, seem to be the ones who do the best work and are the most successful.

I’m of two minds about Astronomy Photographer of the Year though. On the one hand, it’s very well done, beautiful, and stunning. Really everything you could ask for in a book on this subject. But against it, in part it is trying to document something (astrophotography) that is bigger and richer than can be captured in a book.

While the images are flawlessly presented, they lack the backlit brilliance provided by a computer screen, and they aren’t zoomable to view fine details. Many astrophotography images are available on-line at resolutions equivalent to wall-size if they were printed out.

There is also the problem of completeness. While the book is cover-to-cover with great images, in large part it is singular images from outstanding photographers who have dozens or hundreds of stunning images on-line. I found myself flipping a few pages at a time, and then being overcome with a desire to go search out a photographer’s other images. This is perhaps an inevitable outcome of the fact that the competition was conducted on-line (via Flickr), so it’s hard to see it as a negative.

So it really is a fantastic book, I love having it on my shelf, and I often flip through at random and find myself getting inspired, but I don’t think I would have searched it out for that purpose, and I’m not sure who the target customer is supposed to be. It seems incomplete and cursory, especially in the technical details, for someone already involved with the hobby and yet it has a price tag and scope that seem inconsistent with an introductory level book. It would make a great addition to a library collection.

~

If you want to purchase a copy of Astronomy Photographer of the Year: Collection Two, it is available on Amazon.com.

Universe Today and Royal Observatory Greenwich are pleased to be able to offer one free copy of Astronomy Photographer of the Year: Collection Two to our readers. In order to be entered into the giveaway drawing, just put your email address into the box at the bottom of this post (where it says “Enter the Giveaway”) before Monday, November 4, 2013. If this is the first time you’re registering for a giveaway from Universe Today, you’ll receive a confirmation email immediately where you’ll need to click a link to be entered into the drawing. For those who have registered previously, you’ll receive an email later where you can enter this drawing.

Hello Readers! We have a new book review and giveaway for your enjoyment: Star Trek Federation: The First 150  Years. 

From the Publisher:

Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years
For the first time, an ‘in universe’ history of Star Trek, complete with excerpts from Starfleet records and intergalactic intelligence, including James T. Kirk’s official biography and newly translated Klingon reports.