Like the movie "Apollo 13" and the book on which it was based, Neptune: The Planets, Rings and Satellites tells the real story of the Voyager Mission to the outer planets from the point of view of the people who were there. It shows clearly the planning, excitement and major advances in our knowledge of Neptune and its system associated with the highly successful Voyager Mission and will remain a definitive description of Neptune for decades to come.

This is the only book on Neptune written by individuals directly involved with the Voyager Mission and its scientific findings Written by JPL employees with ready access to the pictures and other data returned by the Voyager Mission, this book will disperse some of the myths created by the popular press and non-Voyager authors This book recreates some of the excitement and wonder felt by those on the science and engineering teams as they witnessed the spectacualar data being returned by Voyager

Autorentext

Of all the planets, Saturn is the most instantly recognisable to everyone because of its beautiful system of rings, visible in even a small telescope, discovered by Galileo in 1610, but not recognised for what they are until Christiaan Huygens' observations in 1655. Until 1977, Saturn's rings were considered unique, but we now know that all four gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are surrounded by ring systems. However, it is true that the rings of Saturn remain in a class of their own. James Clerk Maxwell's fascination with the rings of Saturn was made clear in his 1857 Adams Prize essay. After quoting parts of Maxwell's essay in their recent Scientific American article on rings ["Bejewelled Worlds", special edition entitled New Light on the Solar System, V. 13, No. 3, pp. 74-83, 2003], Burns, Hamilton and Showalter stated, "A century and a half later Saturn's rings remain a symbol of all that is exotic and wondrous about the universe". Ellis Miner and Randii Wessen co-authored the successful Springer-Praxis book, Neptune: the planet, rings and satellites, published in December 2001 which has sold 1076 copies worldwide to date.

Klappentext

Like the movie "Apollo 13" and the book on which it was based, Neptune: The Planets, Rings and Satellites tells the real story of the Voyager Mission to the outer planets from the point of view of the people who were there. It shows clearly the planning, excitement and major advances in our knowledge of Neptune and its system associated with the highly successful Voyager Mission and will remain a definitive description of Neptune for decades to come.

Inhalt
Author's Preface.-
List of illustrations and tables.-

1. The Discovery of Neptune.-
2. Neptune's position in the Solar System.-
3. Discovery of the two largest satellites.-
4. Speculation about Neptune's rings.-
5. Other pre-Voyager Neptune observations.-
6. The saga of Voyager 2.-
7. The Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune.-
8. The interior of Neptune.-
9. The atmosphere of Neptune.-
10. The magnetosphere of Neptune.-
11. The rings of Neptune.-
12. The satellites of Neptune.-
13. Post-Voyager observations of Neptune.-
14. Comparative planetology of the four gas giant planets.-
    Further reading.-
    Index.