The Solar System

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The solar system is a mighty big place. It is hard to believe that
Firefly has managed to pack so much of it into this compact book, which
features some 400 colour photographs and more than 150 illustrations,
charts, and diagrams. Its author, science writer Giovanni Caprara, is so
well regarded by the science community that an asteroid was named after
him. This guide is a one-stop reference for anyone who wants to know the
latest scientific facts and theories about Earth and all its neighbours.

Caprara starts with the Sun, then works his way through the “inner
planets” (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) to the “outer planets”
(Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto). A final chapter covers
“minor bodies” (comets, meteorites, and asteroids), and a glossary,
bibliography, index, and list of suggested websites follow. Also
included is a review of some of the hardware, from space probes to the
Hubble Space Telescope, that shows how far science has come since humans
first looked skyward and wondered about what they were seeing.

Although the book is well written and bursting at the seams with
beautiful pictures and illustrations, concessions had to be made due to
its small size. Some of the illustrations might require a magnifying
glass to be fully appreciated. The index is cursory at best; for
example, if someone wanted to look up the Prague Crater (the Earth’s
largest meteor impact site), it would not be found under “Prague” or
even “meteor”: the reader would have to search for it in the
“Earth” chapter.

With these minor flaws noted, The Solar System still stands out as an
excellent reference work for any serious space buff.