Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe

Astronomer Plait (Death from the Skies!) takes readers on an awe-inspiring tour of the cosmos in this dazzling outing. He describes what readers would see if they could visit, for instance, Mars, a nebula, or a black hole, detailing the astrophysics involved at each destination. Visitors to the moon’s surface, he notes, would have to adjust to a lunar day that lasts about as long as a month on Earth and during which the “sky will be utterly black.” Traveling to Saturn, he adds, would be complicated by the fact that the only solid ground to land on is the gas giant’s core, which is “hotter than the surface of the Sun” and lies under thousands of miles of atmosphere. Plait provides accessible overviews of the strange and exciting science involved in the otherworldly scenes, as when he explains that the behavior of light waves interacting with rusty dust in the atmosphere on Mars gives its skies a butterscotch color, except at sunset when the sky and sun appear blue. The text is laced with humor, as when he offers a detailed account of the annihilation readers would face if they flew too close to a black hole and quips that “you probably should’ve read the small print in the guidebook before signing your Rent-a-Starship contract.” Diagrams and vivid color photos enhance the presentation. This will change how readers think about space. Photos. (Apr.)