State of the Universe: New Images, Discoveries, and Events

I work in a small planetarium, and Martin Ratcliffe's "State of the Universe" is a terrific resource for us. We don't have the budget to have a real astrophysicist on our staff, so for us, Martin's book is an ideal way to stay relatively current on cosmology. Anybody with an interest in astronomy would love this book. Can't wait for next year's edition.

When I read about the book I was quite excited and when I received the book, a few days ago, I was not disappointed. The book has a part dedicated to brief news and other with in-depth articles about very interesting topics (gravitational waves and LIGO, supernova 1987A remnants, gamma ray bursts...) and appendixes with data about current and future telescopes and extrasolar planets. I have still not finished it, but it won't take me long to. Only slight cons is that I expected it to cover 2006 news and, because editorial schedule, it covers march 2005 - march 2006. Then maybe State of the Universe 2007 was not the most proper or accurate title. Other con was that I expected glossy paper, and it's not, Mate astronomical pictures are not so spectacular, but I guess this way it's cheaper (and more ecologic?). I hope next year will bring a new State of The Universe, and I sure will buy it,

I read the Martin Radcliffe's book "State of the Universe 2007" and I think it was a good idea to write a book like this. It is informative, well documented, comprehensive and provides you a good vision of what is going on in the different areas of the Universe whicha are under investigation. I think he should publish it every year, to keep un up-to-date with the latest discoveries. We could collect them and follow up different researches and their results and novelties. Superb.