The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Universe

I teach astronomy as a volunteer at our high school and at public star parties given by our astronomical society. If this book were just one more "overview" of astronomy (as so many books are), I would warn you away. But it's not - this book is the best I've ever seen. Great fun, comprehensive, exciting illustrations, clear text.. It is 4 years old now in this edition, so it won't have the latest on Mars, or the Shuttle problems, extraterrestial planets, dark energy etc, but it is still great for its coverage of history and concepts, most of which have not changed in 4 years. I will buy the next edition the day it comes out.

This book is rich with information on the universe in which we live. The text covers just about every major aspect of it...And surpringly offers a great deal of detail on the individual subjects. This detail is something most astronomical books are unfortunately without. A great deal of information plus, overall text structure being wonderful equals Simply Amazing!!

This book is not intimidating but it is still very worthwhile, and if you are interested in this subject it would make a wonderful addition to your own library, and for this price it is hard to make a case against owning it. The short biographies about the legends in astronomy are interesting and many of the pictures are exquisite. The other reviewers have done an excellent job of describing the contents and layout.

It's amazing that I'm the first person to review this great book. This isn't exclusively an astronomy book; it actually covers almost all of classical and modern physics. There are chapters on everything in our universe from the very small to the very large--from quantum mechanics to classical physics, to the solar system to galactic evolution, the Big Bang, and cosmology. If you've wondered about what quarks really do, or the union that produced the electroweak theory, or the theory of the strong nuclear force, what such particles as W and Z bosons, Higgs bosons, gluons, and so on, really do, the cosmological theories of 11-dimensional string physics and membrane or M-theory, this book is a great place to start. To mention just two of the fascinating things I learned, results from the CERN accelerator in Geneva support the idea that nuclear particles absorb Higgs bosons in order to acquire mass, and that the asymmetry in the distribution between positively charged and negatively charged matter in our universe is thought to provide a direction to time itself.The chapters are beautifully illustrated and the text is very clear and readable, and the subjects are presented at a level that would be useful for secondary up through the first year of college. Many special features and sections accompany the text, such as sidebars illustrating important concepts or capsule biographies of famous physicists and scientists and their contributions, such as those of Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman, and dozens of others. As if that weren't enough, there is a sizeable section on observational astronomy with star maps, a chapter on planetary astronomy, and even one on space exploration detailing every important manned and unmanned mission into space. Finally, there is a glossary of technical terms, tables of useful astonomical information and physical data, and more. This is a great book to just browse or to read for the wealth of information on just about every topic in modern physics and astronomy.

This was the book that got me started! I have looked through dozens of guidebooks that described the stars and what to see, but none like this one. The format of this book is perfect, in that it goes from constellation to constellation, showing what is significant in terms of Messier objects, NGC objects, double and variable stars, and so on. There is also other information included, such as brief descriptions of what it is you may be looking at (e.g. what is a globular cluster, or a nebula), and the mythology and history of each constellation. There is a wealth of information in here, and the maps are superb (of course!, they're made by Wil Tirion), though they perhaps should not have a black-sky background, since it makes it hard to see under a red light. Overall, the book is comprehensive (for the beginner- to intermediate-level astronomer) and well made.