This is a wonderful book, exploring nearly every aspect of space, from the Big Bang to black holes. The book is easy to understand and fun to read whether you're doing a project about space or if you just enjoy reading about it. It's chock-full of hundreds of beautiful photographs and realistic-looking pictures, too. The book is accurate, colorful, and up-to-date, and I enjoy looking through it and reading it in my spare time.

This book covers many, many topics in space. Some of them include the solar system, the planets, the sun, meteors, comets, asteroids, the Milky Way, how the universe started and what it will be like in the future, galaxies, stars, the Big Bang, other solar systems, black holes, and much more.

Plus, the book has an entire stargazing section, with directions to make your own simple telescope, star maps, observing the sky, binocular astronomy, and a lot more!

Overall, I highly recommend this book. Adults will enjoy reading it and they will learn a lot too, and young children will enjoy looking at the photographs and having adults explain to them the text. This is a valuable and complete reference, and nearly everyone will enjoy reading it.

This is not just an ordinary book about the solar system, it is rich with information about all aspects of space from observing the universe, exploring space, the solar system, stars, galaxies and practical stargazing. Like other DK encyclopedias this is a great piece of work. Though kids (ages 8-12) might find the text a bit difficult to understand, the pictures and the way the information is presented can still awaken their interest and capture their full attention.

I cannot count the number of times I have spent an entire
evening with my 5 yr old being asked to explain this or that
catchy page with its wonderful graphics and amazing photos, only
to lose myself in its lucid explanations.

I wouldn't say the CD is spectacular, but my 5 yr old seems to
think it is better than any computer game he's played. He loves
the book and the CD so much that he just can't resist the
temptation to keep telling his cousins and friends about the
wonders of space, gravity, galaxies, supermassive black-holes
and quasars! It is a while now that I've read a story book to
him at night. This book is his staple.

...P>Bottom line -- I recommend this book.

This is a wonderful book full of explanations, photographs and maps. There's a bit of history about the Milky Way Galaxy's discovery followed by descriptions of our Galaxy and the surrounding neighborhood, the "Local Group." The book starts outward and moves in toward the galactic center, describing the various spiral arms along the way. It contains great maps and excellent descriptions, particularly of our very local part of the Galaxy. It's not a difficult read, though a little previous reading in astronomy wouldn't hurt. Definitely a great resource for amateur astronomers and those with just a passing interest. This is not a new book, and I'd love to see a newer edition.

Reading this book rekindled an old dormant interest in "reading" the night sky. This book, if carefully read, presents galactic structure are we currently know it in a way that truly make one rethink the night sky and truly begin to understand what one is seeing. I have to agree with several prior reviews: this is the kind of book that can expand one's mind. I went so far as to duplicate the color maps and laminate them so that when I star gaze, I can refer to the maps and place objects in our Orion Arm, Perseus Arm, or Sagittarius Arm. The explanation of Gould's belt made me appreciate again the splendor of Orion in the winter sky. This book is well worth the price and read. It can be casually read, but careful reading and study pay big dividends.

a superb book for amateur-reading . Beautiful colourful pictures of our galaxy. A 'road-map' on a scale you've never seen ! It tells you more about our home-galaxy, distances, objects, and the location of our own star (the sun) than whatever astronomical photographs may. I was very sorry to reach the last pages.

Heather Couper has scored a coup in writing this fun and exciting book to help you and your child be successful in school science. We used this book as a guide to a curriculum we wrote for a private school here in Washington. The students used to cheer when I came in the room with the lesson of the week which always came with an experiment from this book. Science was exciting and I never had any discipline problems. When you can properly engage a student and take away the fear of failure, you have won. This approach helped all the students but was especially impactful for the students with learning disabilities who struggled with the written word only approach. Get excited about science with your children! This book removes all fears.

This book teaches much information about the universe, from quasars to black holes. It has many, many experiments kids can use to learn about different planets and topics. Great book!

This book is the best synopsis of the Big Bang I have found yet to date. It is accurate with respect to recent understandings of the creation, history and future of the universe. It is intended as a children's book, but I believe it is really an adult book. It requires some knowledge and previous studying of the topic to fully comprehend its content. I have tried to read it to 8 and 12 year old children, but it is beyond their capabilities. This book puts in a graphical way, the information that is so much of the time only mental constructs. I love the illustrations and how they allow my mind to expand, trying to comprehend the magnitude of this topic. I compare this book with Steven Hawking's Universe video program in it's information and production quality, but it takes a much shorter time to get through, and you can spend time studying a particular page until you understand all that is there. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in studying the subject.

For those who want an excellent relatively easy-level introduction to SETI and bioastronomy, or know someone who does, I highly recommend this book. Do not be "turned off" by the Young Adult reading level. This is a nicely presented and intelligent work that beautifully illustrates the major concepts.

For example, there is a nice chart of the Kardashev levels of Galactic Civilizations, with Type I being a planet that can utilize all the resources of its world (humanity is only at Level 0.6); Type II can utilize the resources of its entire planetary system (i.e., Dyson Spheres); Type III can utilize the resources of an entire galaxy; and Type IV, which can utilize the resources of many galaxies. I would think the latter two might consider us as bugs or microbes in its incredible civilization and this may explain why we have not been contacted by such beings. Plus, with their seriously advanced technologies, we might also not be able to recognize their astroengineering projects.

I think they cover all the bases nicely in a basic but smart way. They even discuss ideas on "radical" life forms, from the standard silicon creatures up to the new theory that our entire Universe acts like a living being in competition with other universes outside our own. Essentially, if a universe has black holes, it can then reproduce and make new universes. This idea naturally has a long way to go beyond the seriously theoretical stage, but it is only wise to look beyond the standard views of alien life that have been around for decades.

I gave this book as a gift for my son when he was 4 years old and he loved it from the very first moment... It features great ilustrations and simple yet interesting text for all ages... It is a great book for any parent whose child is beginning to ask questions about the universe...

This children's picture book is well-written and sets forth nearly incomprehensible topics in language children can understand. I would strongly recommend this book for 10 year-olds and above. On the other hand, I have to post an equally-strong warning to mothers of small but precocious children. My four year-old selected this nonfiction picture book in the young children's reading room of our local library. Last night, he begged me to read it to him. He was moderately frightened by the concept of the virtually limitless gravitational pull of black holes. He was horrified by singularities (the book has an illustrated example of energy concentrating in such a way as to create an alien cat) and absolutely, heart-poundingly terrified by the idea of white holes spewing out matter into new universes. We put the book away without finishing it and thought about more pleasant things for awhile. Not surprisingly, my son had nightmares about black holes sucking him in and white holes spewing him out last night. Don't make the same mistake I did. Save this book for the older kids.

As a 10-year-old who is studying black holes, this book is a good resources. It has lots of good info, although it is a bit confusing at some points. I have gotten TONS of black hole stuff, but I think this is the best book on black holes for my age level. Black holes are an interesting subject, and I love studying them. They are a huge mystery, one of many in the universe. I think the most interesting fact I have found about Black Holes is that they can warp you to another universe. One of the reasons that I like to study them is because me and my partner, Cody, can make many predictions, such as if they actually DO warp you. This book basiclly has most of the info you need on Black Holes.

This book is very well done. The information is invaluable to anyone who wishes to know anything about black holes. The descriptions are thourough and the illustrations compliment the information very well. I'd recomend this to anyone who has a beginning interest in black holes or someone who's already started.