Robin Rees

The name Canopus was originally suggested by Sir Patrick Moore, and the company was named and registered in 1999. Patrick went on to write or stimulate a number of titles. Our list continues to go from strength to strength. The books we produce now follow two distinct paths: popular illustrated astronomy packaged for other publishing houses (this currently includes Philips and Thames and Hudson), or appearing under the Canopus imprint; and academic physics commissioned and produced exclusively for Springer Verlag.

2006 saw the publication of our most successful title yet. Bang! The Complete History of the Universe was a unique collaboration between Brian May, Sir Patrick Moore, and Chris Lintott. Created by Canopus, it needed massive sales and rights support, so we produced the book for Carlton to publish. They launched it with aplomb and soon sold out the first edition. They then printed 13 different foreign editions. For an update on which languages it is in, and where to get books in dIfferent languages, please check our fantastic website www.BangUniverse.com. October 2007 sees the launch of a new edition, incorporating developments in astronomy during the past year.

Under the Canopus imprint, we published Dark Side of the Universe - Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the Fate of the Universe by Iain Nicolson at the end of 2006. It has had a wonderful reception by the review media. It tackles head on the grave problem which is identified at the end of Bang! – that is, that most of the matter in the Universe is missing, so all our theories about the Universe are based on observations of  the puny few percent of the Universe we can actually observe. Iain is one of the most gifted authors currently writing about astronomy and cosmology.

The academic physics list we are commissioning for Springer Verlag continues to expand rapidly, and the first few titles have recently appeared: Polarons in Advanced Materials by Alexandre S Alexandrov, Numerical Continuation Methods in  Dynamical Systems by Bernd Krauskopf et al., and Nanostructured Soft Matter by A. V. Zvelindovsky. See http://www.springer.com/east/home/physics?SGWID=5-10100-0-0-0 for more details.

Canopus’s mission is to have fun while publishing as much useful and entertaining science as possible. I am indebted to Patrick Moore and Brian May on both fronts. Highlight events this year have been the celebration of Patrick’s amazing achievement presenting  BBC’s Sky at Night for 50 years, and the award of Brian’s PhD in astrophysics.  Cheers!