Books & Beyond

Edited by Stuart J. Goldman

Publishing Impacts

ASTEROID
Patricia Barnes-Svarney (Plenum Publishing, 1996). 292 pages. ISBN 0-306-45408-4.
$25.95.
FIRE ON EARTH
John and Mary Gribbin (St. Martins Press,
1996). 264 pages. ISBN 0-312-14335-4.
$23.95.
IMPACT!
Gerrit L. Verschuur (Oxford University
Press, 1996). 237 pages. ISBN 0-19-510-1057. $25.00.*
RAIN OF IRON AND ICE

John S. Lewis (Helix Books, 1996). 246

pages. ISBN 0-201-48950-3. $25.00.

ERIODICALLY, whether coincidentally or on purpose, several authors write books about nearly the
same topic at about the same time. If
theres a hot astronomical issue in the
popular press, it is only natural that indepth works attempt to tell the whole
story and put scientific discoveries in a
broader context. Thus, authors and publishers scramble to ride the wave of public interest and make some money before
attention turns to the next hot topic.
For example, soon after results from
the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite were released in 1992, a slew of
books about the Big Bang and cosmology were published. When so many books
arrive simultaneously, I prefer to note
them all at once, as I was able to do in
the January 1994 issue, page 57.
Another topic of growing popular interest is the threat of impacts from
comets and asteroids. The fascination is
understandable: the world watched comet
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Sky & Telescope January 1997

Earth has been a target for comets and asteroids for millions of years, but weve been
lucky. Several recent books explore the what, when, and why of these cosmic interlopers
and discuss what to do about preventing a catastrophe. Copyright 1996 Joe Tucciarone.

fragments hit Jupiter in July 1994; Comet

Hyakutake looked darned big and close
last March; and telescopes dedicated to
looking for near-Earth objects keep finding them often! I even caught a very
short commercial on NBC for a television movie to be broadcast in February
about an asteroid causing a really bad
day on Earth.
Two of the first books to come out
about the impact threat were Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets by Duncan Steel (Wiley, 1995) and Hazards Due
to Comets and Asteroids edited by Tom
Gehrels (University of Arizona Press,
1995), which were reviewed by Lucy McFadden a year ago (S&T: January 1996,
page 54). Heres a look at whats appeared since then.
In Asteroid: Earth Destroyer or New
Frontier? Patricia Barnes-Svarney offers
a light but broad overview of nearly
everything to do with asteroids and their
ilk. Moving quickly through early concepts of the solar system, she explores
the history of how astronomers discovered the various classes of minor planets
and then determined their characteristics.
1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Along the way, readers learn the relationships that join asteroids, meteorites,
comets, and other small bodies of the
solar system. After explaining what we
know about asteroids, the book turns to
the future, describing upcoming robotic
missions to explore the minor planets,
proposals for increased diligence in
searching for asteroids in order to spot
any threatening ones before it is too late,
and the promises of mining asteroids.
The text is up to date with many recent
findings. However, if Barnes-Svarneys
descriptions leave you wanting more, the
endnote references lead to a wealth of
further information.
Nevertheless, the book does have some
problems. The professional affiliations of
some of the people mentioned arent
quite right (it took three tries to get Brian
Marsdens completely correct, the first
being the amusing Central Bureau of
Astronomical Telegraphs). More unfortunate, however, is the sad quality of the
illustrations. Many of the photographs are
so muddy they are undecipherable.
* Available from Sky Publishing Corp.

Overall, Asteroid offers a lot of solid

information that is very readable and entertaining. The less you know about asteroids, the more valuable this book is.
John and Mary Gribbins Fire on
Earth: Doomsday, Dinosaurs, and Humankind is a bit more tabloidish in style
and focuses on the destructive effects impacts have had and could have on terrestrial life. Chapters describe the evidence
and search for the smoking gun crater
for the dinosaur-killing Cretaceous impact, the 1908 Tunguska explosion, and
the cratering history of other planets.
While the Gribbins bring up the hypothesis of Nemesis or the Death
Star to account for periodic mass extinctions, they adequately dismiss it as being
unlikely. Instead, however, they champion
an alternate view from 15 years ago that
accrued scant scientific endorsement. Citing biblical passages and the mythology
of several cultures, Victor Clube and
William Napier argued that ancient civilizations faced the effects of cosmic impacts. Furthermore, occasionally a giant
comet strays into the solar system and
breaks up, producing several impacts. The
most recent ones legacy is some shortperiod comets and meteor showers we
see today.
The entire tale smacks of Velikovskyian nonsense the way the Gribbins tell
it, especially when I went back to read
how many of Clube and Napiers views
were shown to have credibility problems
(S&T: May 1983, page 422).
Gerrit Verschuur treads cautiously
upon the same notions in his contribution, Impact! The Threat of Comets and
Asteroids. With its equally provocative
title, it explores much of the same ground
as the Gribbins work. Yet Verschuurs
less sensationalistic take on Clube and
Napiers historical impacts and periodic
giant comets puts the ideas into better
perspective. The gist is that perhaps weve
been incredibly lucky and have grown
complacent in our seemingly calm solar
system. The turbulent times of the nottoo-distant past may return sooner than
we might like to think.
Verschuurs Impact! goes on to describe the other standard topics of impact
research mass extinctions, Tunguska,
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, and so forth
with clarity and personal insight. Regarding search programs for finding
threatening bodies, Verschuur makes an
aside that perhaps insurance companies
should fund them, since their solvency is
doomed should a city or two be wiped
out by a big rock from space.
Although Rain of Iron and Ice: The
Very Real Threat of Comet and Asteroid
Bombardment by John S. Lewis previ-

ously appeared in this department as a

Briefly Noted entry, it bears mentioning
again as it is an excellent blend of fact
and fact-based fancy. All the same topics
are included, adroitly described by an
author who is a planetary scientist.
But the good stuffs at the end of the
book: how impacts affect those living on
Earth and, as the final chapters succinct
title asks, What Can We Do About It?
A table of notable meteorite falls and
the damage they caused reveals that few
people get hurt but a lot of buildings get
hit. The part I like best is the chapter
describing, through statistical models
cranked out by a computer, a centurys
worth of minor destructive events as
small objects crash into land and sea or
explode in the atmosphere. I hope the
writers of the forthcoming NBC movie
had this book to help inspire the special
effects (along with Verschuurs descriptions of impact-borne 100-kilometer high
tsunamis).
One subject Lewis omits from Rain of
Iron and Ice is the futurist dreaming of
using asteroids as resources. Thats because he wrote a follow-on book, Mining
the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets (Helix Books,
1996). With it youll learn what asteroids
are good for, besides giving our ecosystem a clean slate!
And there is still more to come; at least
two more books are on the way. Doomsday Asteroids: Can We Survive? by Donald W. Cox and James H. Chestek is due
at the end of 1996 from Prometheus
Books. And a more scholarly forthcoming
title is Planetary Emergencies: The Colli-

sion of an Asteroid or Comet with the

Earth, edited by Ralph Coppola. Unfortunately, this last title, which is based on
the International Seminar on Planetary
Emergencies held in 1993, has been
postponed indefinitely by its publisher,
Springer-Verlag.
S. J. G.
REALSKY CD
Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 390
Ashton Ave., San Francisco, CA 94112. CDROM set for Windows and MacOS (PowerMac only). $250.

AS IT A DREAM, or did someone really say that you can now

own the legendary Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) for $250?
Its true, the digital age has served up yet
another fabulous benefit for computerequipped amateur astronomers. The entire night sky from the north celestial
pole to about declination 15 recorded
with the 48-inch Oschin Schmidt telescope can now be had on eight CDROMs. A decade ago no one even
dreamed about things like this.
Anyone who peruses the sky with a
telescope needs a star chart. Within the
memory of most baby-boomer amateurs
is a time when the venerable Nortons
Star Atlas served all but the most dedicated deep-sky observers. During the last
two decades, however, bigger telescopes
and the growth of astroimaging (see page
38) created a demand for better atlases.
Today we have Uranometria 2000.0 and a
slew of digital atlases. But as most observers know from experience, the more

The RealSky CD offers amateur astronomers a celestial atlas that was once only for
professionals. The entire Palomar Observatory Sky Survey now fits on eight CD-ROMs.

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

January 1997 Sky & Telescope

65

Amateurs will find the

RealSky CD a powerful
tool for exploring littleknown deep-sky objects. Consider this 25arcminute-wide view of
the nebulous complex
involving IC 2162 in
northeastern Orion. Its
symbol on Uranometria
2000.0 suggests that it
is nothing more than a
nondescript diffuse
nebula.

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detailed an atlas is, the more likely it is to

contain misplotted objects and omissions.
Enter the photographic atlas what
speaks more truth than an actual picture
of the sky? While numerous ones exist,
none is better recognized than the POSS.
It remains the deepest full-coverage survey of the northern sky. Only now is it
being superseded by the ongoing second-generation survey.
Until very recently, anyone wanting the
POSS was limited mainly to photographic
prints made from master copies of the
original 14-inch-square glass plates. Last
July the quoted price for this version of
the atlas was $15,000!
During the 1980s the Space Telescope
Science Institute undertook scanning
and digitizing the POSS as part of its
support operation for the Hubble Space
Telescope. Electronically compressed by
a factor of 10, the data fit on 102 CDROMs and sells for more than $3,000.
The RealSky CD is a 100-times compression of the red-light POSS plates. Along
with viewing software prepared by Software Bisque, the package is available at
a remarkably attractive price. This is an
astounding product.
While being a user of Windows 3.1 may
not qualify someone as a dinosaur (a
term reserved for those of us still running
purely DOS applications), it does place
you on the endangered-species list. This
point was made painfully evident with the
RealSky CD. The viewing software, which
is a must for displaying the data, works

best with Windows 95 and Windows NT,

both native 32-bit operating systems. The
program will not even load on computers
running (16-bit) Windows 3.1 unless the
system is first upgraded with the Win32s
subsystem. Fortunately, many are.
Since I was evaluating an initial release
of RealSky CD, I expected a few bugs.
Some were related to running the software under Windows 3.1. Software bugs
are usually quickly fixed, and Im sure
most will be gone before this review rolls
off the press. Furthermore, those I found
typically involved the programs subtleties, and they were far overshadowed
by the thrill of just having the POSS
available on my computer. Tom Bisque
told me that no significant bugs surfaced
in the Macintosh software during the
days following the RealSky CDs release.
It would be easy to rave about the
wonders of having red-light photographs
of the sky to roughly 20th magnitude
available at a moments notice. The viewing software includes several image-processing routines, such as displaying images as positives (white stars on a black
sky) or negatives. Images can be tuned
for brightness and contrast, zoomed in or
out, and viewed with a live zoom, which
shows a magnified portion of the image
under the cursor.
There are also two methods for determining the right ascension and declination (equinox 1950.0 or 2000.0) of any
point within an image, and while these
values are displayed to arcsecond accuSome of the limits imposed by RealSky CDs
100-times data compression are apparent in
this 25-arcminute-wide
view of the well-known
Cocoon Nebula, IC 5146,
in Cygnus. Subtle gradations in the nebulas
brightness appear
strongly pixelated, and
the finest nebulous details are obscured.

66

Sky & Telescope January 1997

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

racy, experience warns me against using

them for high-precision astrometry.
Most observers couldnt count the
number of times that having the POSS
would have been invaluable. Heres just
one example. While loading RealSky CD
into my backyard observatorys computer, I was letting the autoguided telescope
take CCD images of asteroids. One
image contained two anonymous galaxies each superposed with a star about as
bright as the galaxy itself tantalizing
supernova candidates. Despite zero experience with the RealSky CD, in less than
five minutes I had the POSS view on the
screen! No supernovae, but also no wasted time running down false alarms.
There are some caveats for RealSky
CD users. Foremost is the 1-square limit
for the largest area of sky that can be
viewed. Even opening an image this
large can strain a computers resources,
taking more than 45 seconds to display it
with a 166-megahertz Pentium machine
with 32 megabytes of RAM. I found it
much better to work with 10- and 15arcminute-square images that opened in
less than 15 seconds.
If your first thought is to pop open a
view of the Orion Nebula or the Andromeda Galaxy with RealSky CD, dont!
The POSS was intended to go deep, and
as such it offers disappointing views of
bright objects, most of which appear
burned out. The 100-times data compression also results in some loss of the
faintest nebulosity and produces images
that appear pixelated, especially when
viewed at high magnifications. The software, however, includes a smoothing filter
that renders a more photolike display.
While the program includes lists of interesting NGC objects on each of the
CD-ROMs, RealSky CD has no search
engine. The quickest way to view, say, the
Ring Nebula is to enter its coordinates
from a handy catalog. You can also create custom lists of objects for rapid recall, but again youll need to gather the
coordinates from another source.
There are amazing advantages to be
had when the RealSky CD is coupled
with TheSky version 4.0, but these mostly involve features found in the latters
software package, which is outside the
scope of this review. You can find out
more including some bug fixes on
Software Bisques World Wide Web site,
http://www.bisque.com/thesky/.
The RealSky CD is yet one more example of how computer technology is
changing the way amateur astronomers
can enjoy their hobby. This one is really
a dream come true.

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DENNIS di CICCO
1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

January 1997 Sky & Telescope

67

Briefly Noted

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The Astronomical Almanac for the Year

1997, Nautical Almanac Office (U.S. Naval
Observatory, 1996). 540 pages. ISBN 0-11886505-6. (U.S. Government Printing Office
Stock No. 008-054-00165-3.) $35.00.*
This reference provides for 1997 precise
ephemerides and phenomena of the Sun,
Moon, planets and their satellites, positions of
bright stars, and elements for asteroids and periodic comets. It contains much definitive calendrical material, information on time and coordinate systems, and other data indispensable
to astronomers.
The Handbook of the British Astronomical
Association 1997, N. J. Goodman, ed. (British
Astronomical Association, Burlington House,
Piccadilly, London, W1V 9AG, United Kingdom; 1996). 104 pages. ISSN 0068-130X. $18.81
postpaid, paperbound.
The BAA Handbook gives ephemerides of
the Sun, Moon, planets, double stars, and periodic comets for 1997; predictions for Jupiters
satellites and for lunar occultations in Great
Britain, Australia, and New Zealand; a detailed diary of meteor showers; and more.
Astronomical Calendar 1997, Guy Ottewell
(Astronomical Workshop, 1996). 72 pages.
ISBN 0-934546-30-4. $19.95, paperbound.*
Facing 11-by-15-inch pages present a star
map, planet charts, and day-by-day notes on
interesting sky events; there are innovative diagrams and a wealth of explanatory text.
Observers Handbook 1997, Roy L. Bishop,
ed. (Royal Astronomical Society of Canada,
136 Dupont St., Toronto, ON M5R 1V2, Canada; 1996). 244 pages. ISSN 0080-4193. $17.95,
paperbound.*
This valuable reference features a daily calendar of sky events, finder charts for the outer
planets and bright asteroids, predictions of
eclipses, lunar occultations for North American observers, and phenomena of Jupiters
satellites. It lists bright stars, variables, deepsky objects, meteor showers, meteorite craters
on Earth, and more.
The A.L.P.O. Solar System Ephemeris: 1997,
Robert Manske, ed. (Association of Lunar and
Planetary Observers, 1996). Approx. 100 pages.
ISSN 0890-216X. $8.00, spiralbound. (Available from Mark A. Davis, 7304 Doar Rd.,
Awendaw, SC 29464.)
This handbook compiles basic observing information about the solar system, including
overviews of the years solar and lunar
eclipses, tables and diagrams for the planets
and their satellites, comet ephemerides, and
tips for catching meteor showers.
1997 Comet Handbook, Syuichi Nakano and
Daniel W. E. Green, eds. (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138; 1996). 56 pages. $15.00.
This special (fifth) issue of the International
Comet Quarterly provides orbital elements
and ephemerides for 54 comets expected to be
visible during 1997. Subscribers of ICQ can
purchase copies for $8.00.
*Available from Sky Publishing Corp.

68

Sky & Telescope January 1997

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.