in astronomy and has even professionally analyzed images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Plait could dance circles around what most of us know about space. This was a moment, he points out, when Hollywood actually got space right (unlike their interpretations of black holes, which he explores in a later chapter). My favorite chapter imagines a spaceship landing on the surface of the Star Wars planet Tatooine the movie clip of Luke Skywalker standing at dusk beneath a sky with two suns provides the basis for Plait’s enthusiastic explanation of what conditions could lead to a sunset that looks, well, exactly like that. His vivid imagination combines with his deep and specific scientific knowledge to engage-and educate-lay readers.Īs the book progresses, Plait moves from the familiar-the moon, Mars, Saturn and even Pluto-to wilder reaches and more conceptual destinations. Beginning with that closest rock, the moon, Plait describes at length what it would feel like to land on the lunar surface, from the bizarre sensation of shuffle-walking because of the difference in gravity to the pesky bits of crushed-up rock, called regolith, that would inevitably dust one’s spacesuit. The author of Bad Astronomy and Death from the Skies!, Plait writes the Bad Astronomy newsletter and lives in Colorado.Have you ever wanted to visit space? Reading public astronomer Philip Plait’s Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe is the next best thing. Whether strolling through a dust storm under Mars’ butterscotch sky, witnessing the birth of a star, or getting dizzy in a technicolor nebula, Plait is an illuminating, entertaining guide to the most otherworldly views in our universe.Ībout the Author: Philip Plait is an astronomer, sci-fi dork, TV documentary talking head, and all-around science enthusiast.
On this lively, immersive adventure through the cosmos, Plait draws ingeniously on the latest scientific research to transport readers to ten spectacular sites, from our own familiar Moon to the outer reaches of our solar system and far beyond. How would Saturn’s rings look from a spaceship sailing just above them? If you were falling into a black hole, what’s the last thing you’d see before your spaghettification? What would it be like to visit the faraway places we currently experience only through high-powered telescopes and robotic emissaries? Faster-than-light travel may never be invented, but we can still take the scenic route through the universe with renowned astronomer and science communicator Philip Plait. A rip-roaring tour of the cosmos with the Bad Astronomer, revealing the sky as never seen before-from everywhere but Earth.
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