Planetary Pioneers
The Mapping of Our Solar System
By David Quarmby
October 2011
Book Guild
ISBN: 9781846245480
Distributed by Trans-Atlantic Publications
56 pages
, Illustrated
$20.00 Hardcover
OUT OF PRINT
Did you know? A Chinese astronomer, Gan De, spotted one of Jupiter's moons with his naked eye some two thousand years before Galileo viewed four of the moons through a telescope in 1610. The highest mountain in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars it is a little under three times as tall as Mount Everest. Pluto, first discovered in 1930, was demoted to a 'dwarf planet' in 2006. In Planetary Pioneers, physicist, computer technologist and amateur astronomer David Quarmby paints a vivid picture of each of the planets and tells the extraordinary stories of the people who discovered and mapped them from trailblazing pioneers such as Coperernicus and Galileo to gentleman amateurs such as William Herschel. Richly illustrated and clearly written, this is the perfect introduction to the wonders of the Solar System.