Atlas of the Solar System

This is one of the best books ever written on the solar system. I am the Assistant Curator of a planetarium, and I use this book constantly when I am writing programs. It is an excellent reference for the layman as well as the professional. I would love to see this book in a revised edition, especially in light of the data returned from spacecraft since it was first published (e.g., Magellan, Galileo, NEAR, Clementine, Ulysses, etc.) This is the only drawback that I can see to this book: the information is starting to get dated.

This was the first reference book on the solar system I ever purchased and although I keep looking for a more up to date reference, nothing else compares to this one in scope and depth of content while remaining an excellent book for laypersons with a keen interest in astronomy.This book has wonderful photographs as they all do but also explains the workings of the solar system in much greater detail. The section on the sun is over 50 pages long with explanations of black body radiation, absorption lines, doppler shift and multiple sections on the chromosphere, sunspots, flares, the corona, etc. Coverage of the planets is no less detailed.I sincerely hope that this reference is updated soon, although even the out of print editions will remain excellent references for years to come.

This is one of the best layman-type reference works I've ever been able to find on our solar system. It contains something for everybody: lots of text, images, illustrations, and facts and figures. The book begins with a synopsis of the universe, and then moves onto detailed chapters on each of the bodies which exist in the solar system: - The Sun; - The 9 planets; - Known satellites; - The asteroid belt; - and finally the oort cloud and comets. If that isn't enough, it also covers (in brief) the history of astronomy, space exploration, and many other topics. I've read it from cover to cover & pull it out every time there's a new space probe or landing to refresh my memory.