The Planetary Scientist's Companion

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 400 pages
• Published by: Oxford University Press, USA December 10, 1998
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0195116941
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195116946
• Book Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 1 pounds

Reader Reviews
But not. I saw this on my advisor's shelf and thought it would be totally useful to have on my own. Sometimes its a pain to look up planetary data on the web while doing work, and I thought that maybe it would be nice to have it close at hand in hardcopy. The previous reviewer gave a good assessment of the overall content of the book -- its a compilation of data relevant to planetary scientists including bulk data on the planets (mass, radius, orbital semimajor axis), chemical data on the planets (relevant chemical reactions, weight % of species), general chemical data (molecular weights and such), etc. Basically a whole bunch of stuff that you use relatively often but always have to go fumbling through your papers to find. Unfortunately, the level of errors (typographical or otherwise) in the book is too high to allow me to use it when I really need it. In a textbook, or a popular book, description of the concepts and processes involved are more important than getting facts right, so this sort of typo thing doesn't matter. However, in a book of facts, if some of the facts are wrong, it brings into doubt the validity of the rest. Basically, my problem is that I can use it for back-of-the-envelope calculations, but if I'm going to put something in a paper I look it up on the web to make sure that it isn't one of the mistakes. Looking it up on the web was what I used to do anyway, before I got the book. So, in my experience, it hasn't been as useful as I had hoped it would be. Like a poor-debating jerk I can't remember any particular errors except the one that goaded me into writing this review -- as I was looking through the table on bulk data of planets and satellites it claimed that the 5 major Uranian satellites (Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon) orbited retrograde. I didn't think that was the case, and when I checked on the NSSDC website sure enough, it wasn't. Comment | | (Report this)