Times Literary Supplement Review of The Canopus Encyclopedia of Astronomy,
11th March 2005

"There is perhaps no area of modern science that appears more frequently in the popular press than astronomy, which has the advantage of producing dramatic and beautiful images of celestial objects. A recent edition of the New York Times sported a magnificent colour photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope of "The Antennae", a pair of colliding galaxies, on the fornt page above the fold. The image appears once more in The Canopus Encyclopedia of Astronomy, an exceptionally comprehensive and up-to-date A-Z of the subject.

There are four broad classes of articles. First are the mandatory entries describing astronomical objects and events. These are mostly descriptive paragraphs explaining phenomena such as Comet Hyakutake, red giant stars and irregular galaxies. But there are also many longer essays on major astronomical topics such as "Art and Astronomy", "Cosmology", "Mars and its Satellites" and "Exoplanets and Brown Dwarfs". The entries cover astronomy across the entire range of the electromagnetic spectrum, including gravitational wave and neutrino astronomy. Theoretical ideas in the field, such as "Quintessence", are also discussed. The articles are in alphabetical order, and have been provided by about 800 research astronomers. They are stylistically fresh and are pitched right at the limits of contemporary research. The longer articles give references for further reading. There is excellent and dense cross-referencing, so that if a topic is not found under the expected heading it can easily be tracked elsewhere.

In addition to contemporary topics, the editors have assembled a full range of entries on the history of astronomy, and short biographies of the great astronomers from the Greeks to modern times. More ambitiously, the book features descriptions and pictures of ground-based observatories and space astronomy missions, including some missions which are still in development and have not yet been launched.

Astronomy is one of the few sciences in which professionals and amateurs can usefully work together, and another unique feature of this encyclopedia is its emphasis on practical astronomy. There are more than two dozen extensive essays on a wide range of practical topics, set off and highlighted with yellow backgrounds for quick identification. Examples include "CCD Imaging", "Finding and Collecting Meteorites" and "Observing Eclipses". These are not only useful for amateur astronomers, but also give the general reader a good sense of the instrumentation and techniques involved in making various kinds of astronomical measurements. The Canopus Encyclopedia of Astronomy is handsomely produced, with colour illustrations on nearly every page, and reasonably priced."

Bob Joseph, Times Literary Supplement