More things in the Heavens
Michael Werner, Peter Eisenhardt
★★★★★ 3.5/5
Non Fiction: Science
Overall:
The Spitzer space telescope was retired earlier this year (Jan 2020) and I enjoyed reading this chronicle of the many discoveries made or aided by that 17 year long mission. I say that as an amateur astronomer, astrophotographer and all around space and physics enthusiast. The occasional science book reader might come away less impressed. I cover the reasons for this at the end.
The Title
” There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Hamlet’s humbling words symbolize our incessant quest to understand the universe and surprises thrown our way. Spitzer exemplifies this making this such an apt title! That subtitle—How infrared astronomy is expanding our view of the universe—is a little misleading though. It suggests a recounting of all of infrared astronomy in the book. Make no mistake: this book is primarily about the Spitzer telescope mission with only occasional references to its antecedents: The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) and Infrared Space Observatory (ISO).
The Glossy Paper
It’s seldom that one comments on the paper a book is printed on, but this book warrants it. If you’re going to read it, do yourself a favor and get the hardcover edition and not the kindle or other e-reader versions. For one, the several detailed and glorious Spitzer color images (often accompanied by visible image counterparts) and charts are a core part of the narrative, to be appreciated in color; and two, that is some high quality paper this book is printed on: thick and glossy—a pleasure to hold, read and flip through!
The Book itself
Having worked on Sptizer for multiple decades in senior roles, Dr. Werner (lead scientist) and Dr. Eisenhardt, provide an authoritative review of Sptizer’s discoveries.
The book is thoughtfully structured, covering in turn: broad stellar and planet formation, science within our solar system, and then going out to the farthest reaches of the universe currently accessible (current record holder: galaxy GN-z11, more than 13B light years when the universe was presumably only a few hundred million years old—Cosmic dawn!). There’s a lot to learn about Spitzer’s discoveries and the science behind them: notably, Spitzer’s contributions towards better understanding of NEOs; the discovery of a new ‘infrared’ ring around Saturn (the V ring); data showing how commonplace the formation of star and planetary systems similar to our own is; Spitzer’s contributions in exoplanet discovery and analysis of exoplanet composition; changes to star formation rates in the universe and when it might have peaked (spoiler: it was way in the past!); and what we know about galaxies at the farthest reaches and hence in the infant universe.
I found the exoplanet discoveries and explanations particularly fascinating: going from transit curves → size → density → to estimation of composition, demonstrates the power of harnessing the services of several instruments collaboratively, and the human capacity to apply fundamental physical principles to deduce much about objects that are so far out and minuscule from our perspective that we are unlikely to be able to visit or even directly image any time soon.
Almost as fascinating was the section on Lyman dropout technique for photometric redshift estimates—a concept that was new to me, but should not have been since it was elegantly covered in the April 2018 issue of Sky and Telescope (The First Galaxies).
It could have been much better!
Existential topics such as the origin of galaxies and the discovery of earth like planets have the potential to truly connect with readers and lure them into astronomy and science. This book fails to exploit that potential.
The authors’ writing has clearly been honed by writing papers for scientific journals rather than popular science for the layperson. This shows in the style which is academic and somewhat pedantic for the most part. While the data and its implications are fascinating, I would have also liked to see more of the human side—the stories and personalities behind the discoveries, making the reader truly care. e.g. The naming of the telescope itself has an interesting backstory different from the other space telescopes! Alan Stern and David Grinspoon do this (make a connection with the reader) really well in describing the Pluto mission in Chasing New Horizons.
I would have also loved to learn more about the telescope itself, its design, it’s many instruments, how it is operated, and how decisions were made across competing requests for telescope time. While some of this is covered in the appendix, the book could have devoted more pages to it and as part of the main narrative.
One other peeve: the placement of the charts/images in relation to references to them is quite frustrating with multiple page hops frequently required. Many of these could have been avoided with more thoughtful image/chart placement.
So this book is not likely to enthrall the average reader interested in Science and Space who are perhaps better off reading a summary of Spitzer’s contributions in this Sky and Telescope article by one of the authors.
Onward
And now, I wait ever more eagerly for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope and the many discoveries it will doubtless make as it looks back farther than we have ever been able to.
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