Saturday night I was in Border's bookstore while the telescope was
cooling down in the backyard. I stumbled upon a brand new book on
Mars that is so good I can't believe I haven't heard anything about
it. The book is called:
"A traveler's guide to Mars" (Workman Publishing, August 2003) .
It is written by William Hartmann, a planetary scientist who has been
involved in Mars missions since the very first pictures of craters
were coming back from the Mariner fly-bys in the 1960s. The book is
beautifully written and has more useful information, better
presented, than anything I have seen anywhere on the Red Planet.
That includes
History of Mars observation.
Fold out maps of both classic features and modern topology from the
Mars Global Surveyor.
Detailed discussion of what classic observers got right, what they
got wrong, and why.
Relationship between what we can see in the telescope and the
underlying geology of what's happening on Mars. (Mark, the questions
we talked about at Montebello recently about rocks, dust and the
appearance of dark and light features are beautifully covered here).
Beautiful pictures and diagrams on nearly every page that are well
labeled and chosen to illustrate major points in the discussion.
Gripping photographs from the Mars Global Surveyor mission, most
never before published, and many with such detail that they smack you
immediately of places you know on earth. I randomly opened the book
in and found a picture of dust devils racing across Mars's surface,
leaving zigzag tracks behind them, that was like watching a tornado
report on the news in the midwest. That picture alone was enough to
convince me to buy the book.
Personal sidebars on what is was like to be a scientist actually
working on Mars during the various discovery missions. Hartmann was
getting his Ph.D. with Kuiper working on cratering counts when the
first Mariner sent back photographs of moon-like cratered regions of
Mars. He conveys beautifully the excitement, disappointments,
mistakes, successes, and wildly changing views of both amateur and
professionals as we have probed Mars with increasingly sophisticated
missions.
Hartmann explains the history, the science, and recent results with
one of the most readable styles I have seen, and engages the reader
in the effort to figure out how Mars really works. I am only part
way through the book but I have found interesting new ideas and
information on almost every page.
I wish the book had come out earlier in the year. On the other hand,
one of the reasons I may be enjoying it so much is because I have
spent lots of time looking and sketching Mars during its approach
and close opposition this summer. That time at the eyepiece has
provided just enough experience with Mars features, maps, and
mysteries to make the whole book resonate with things I have wondered
about while exploring Mars with a telescope.
The book is cheap ($19 at Borders, $13 at Amazon), and deserves to
be much more widely known.
David Kingsley