Part of the Popular Science series
These are exciting times. Spacecraft have provided us with close-up pictures of most of the Sun's family of planets and their moons, and probes have landed on several of them. This is a guide to these neighbours of ours, illustrating their surface features and explaining the processes that have shaped them.
Extensively illustrated, the book:
- describes the nature and origin of the solar system
- looks at the internal structure, surface features and weather patterns of each planet and its major satellites
- discusses the possibilities of finding life on other planetary bodies
- covers asteroids, and the icy bodies beyond Pluto
- explains how to see the planets in the sky, and where to find close-up images on the worldwide web.