The Evening Star: Venus Observed

by Henry S.F. Cooper Jr.

Book Overview

Of all the planets in the solar system, none has captivated the imagination of man more than Venus. As early as 3100 B.C., Venus was identified with the goddess of love, and until the 1960s it was believed that it might actually harbor life. Edgar Rice Burroughs populated Venus with a beautiful princess, a cast of dastardly villains, and of course a dashing hero. But the science of Venus has only recently been understood and it tells a very different...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374150001
• ISBN13: 9780374150006
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Space exploration for the layman

Venus Observed provides a unique look into the Magellan mission: a journalist's perspective. Not being a scientist myself, it was easy to understand and comprehend not only the space craft, but also the data that was retrieved. Thanks to Henry S.F Cooper's superb writing, anybody can sit in mission control and understand what the mission planners wanted to achieve, the spacecraft's capabilities, the Venusian landscape, and the competing theories and discoveries of the mission's scientific team. You not only get the scientific stuff, but you also get the human drama as technicians try to keep the craft flying and scientists argue about data that (to them) doesn't make sense. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.