Introducing the Planets and their Moons

Reviews / Votes

'This little book is full of detailed information, anticipating the current Rosetta exploration of the comet 67P (12/11/2014) together with continuing and future exploratory programmes.
There are 12 basic chapters, a full list of tables and illustrations, a useful glossary and a list of books for further reading. Many of the illustrations are from NASA and JPL, including Hubble Space Telescope photographs and artist illustrations. A helpful addition would be diagrams of the relative positions of each set of planet with its moons.
There are detailed descriptions of the surface features and analyses of the compositions of each planet and moon, as far as is possible to date. In some cases the analysis has been from actual samples, such as those from the Earth's Moon and from Mars.
Rather than take each planet separately, each chapter makes comparisons of the planets. Chapter 1 is a general descriptive introduction; Ch. 2 describes the probable origin of the Solar System; Ch. 3 introduces the Planets and their orbits; Ch. 4 discusses planetary differentiation; Ch. 5 describes the magnetic fields; Ch. 6 planetary atmospheres; Ch. 7 geological development of the inner planets; and Ch. 8 volcanism within the inner Solar System. The Earth's moon is discussed in Ch. 9; Ch. 10 covers the outer planets; Ch. 11 the moons of Jupiter and Saturn; and Ch. 12 the moons of Uranus and Neptune.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for detailed and up-to-date information (as at March 2014) to complement other studies. It is written well by a man who worked with NASA. As he says, it is not an exhaustive treatment, but rather intended to inspire readers to investigate more of the subject.'
The Open University Geological Society Journal
'...this is a really good read. By the end of it, you'll either have the basics that you need to make sense of our solar system, or you'll be fired up and wanting to know much more. Surely that's what a good introductory book should be about. In which case this book does its job perfectly!Peter Cattermole describes the characteristics and geological development of the eight large planetary bodies and their more substantial moons. This includes discussion of their orbital properties, magnetic fields, atmospheres and mutual interactions. Rather than deal with the system planet by planet, his approach is comparative. Thus one chapter deals with planetary orbits, another with planetary differentiation and a third with volcanism. This enables the reader to perceive immediately how their position and size led these bodies along different evolutionary paths.'Down to Earth