From Publishers Weekly
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Booklist
Articles cover key concepts (Grand Unified Theory, Quark, Superluminal motion); astronomers (Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Maria Mitchell, Isaac Newton); individual planets, stars, nebulae, and galaxies (Andromeda Galaxy, Earth, Ganymede); satellites, telescopes, and professional facilities (Hubble Space Telescope, Yerkes Observatory); history (Rockets in astronomy); and current research (Dark energy and the cosmological constant, Exobiology and SETI, Neutrino astronomy). Features on practical astronomy, written by noted amateurs and highlighted with a yellow background, provide information on topics such as Observing artificial satellites, Widefield astrophotography, Finding and collecting meteorites, and Discovering novae. Research conducted by professional astronomers is sometimes linked to the practical astronomy features, which results in an interesting combination of theory and practice. Excellent color photographs and illustrations, scattered throughout, supplement the text. Surprisingly, there is no large map to the constellations. Cross-references to related articles are available in some articles. Some entries provide further readings. There is no subject index.
The four-volume Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics (2001), written for an academic and professional audience, is a far more comprehensive (and therefore more expensive) set, particularly suited for academic and special libraries. Written for a general audience, The Firefly Encyclopedia of Astronomy is recommended for high-school and public libraries. Nancy Cannon
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