San Antonio College Library

Aimed at the popular audience by experienced astronomy author Patricia and highlighted by 160 photographs, diagrams and maps, this guide explores every corner of Earth's planetary neighborhood, from the fiery sun at its center to the dark, icy realm where interstellar space begins. It's a state-of-the-art observation of the solar system as we know it today and a knowledgeable forecast of what to expect in the future, from Pluto's demotion to plutoid...

It's the ultimate engineering project - but just how do you build a planet, a solar system and a galaxy from scratch, and what happens if you get any part of it wrong? This exciting series draws on specially filmed interviews with the world's top scientists and engineers and, starting with the raw materials of gas, dust, ice and metal, uses stunning interactive CGI to show step by step how a world is put together. A cosmic construction foreman supervises...

Exploring the Solar System chronicles more than three decades of planetary exploration, revealing the Solar System in all its colourful glory. At one time, the planets and moons of our Solar System were elusive and distant worlds that shimmered tantalizingly through telescope eyepieces; today they are landscapes as vivid and real as those of our own planet. Robotic explorers on missions deep into space and new techniques of image processing have provided...

This work provides a description of the planets and their moons. The books begins with an introduction to the history of planetary observation and discovery. The major planets and their moons are then introduced by presenting common properties, processes, and themes. This is followed by chapters which focus on individual planets and other solar system objects, including a comprehensive treatment of the various space missions; from the Apollo missions...

What is the nature of the material world? How does it work? What is the universe and how was it formed? What is life? Where do we come from and how did we evolve? How and why do we think? What does it mean to be human? How do we know?There are many different versions of our creation story. This book tells the version according to modern science. It is a unique account, starting at the Big Bang and travelling right up to the emergence of humans as...

"What if Earth had several moons or massive rings like Saturn? What if the Sun were but one star in a double-star or triple-star system? What if Earth were the only planet circling the Sun?" "These and other imaginative scenarios are the subject of Arthur Upgren's inventive book, Many Skies: Alternative Histories of the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars. Although the night sky as we know it seems eternal and inevitable, Upgren reminds us that, just as...

Any discussion about finding life elsewhere in the universe always leads us to analyze the factors that make life possible on Earth. What would the earth and life on it be like if our planet had formed under different circumstances? What if the earth were less massive, or if the sun had ended up with more mass when the solar system was formed? What would happen if a star exploded near the earth, or passed through our solar system right now? What if...