Space Encyclopedia

This book is composed of sections on ‘What is space?’ ‘Exploring space’, ‘The solar system’, ‘Comets and meteors’, ‘Mysteries of space’, and ‘Space for everyone’, with a glossary and index. ‘Mysteries of space’ deals sensibly with UFOs, aliens, life on Mars, the Big Bang, and Are there other Earths? ‘Space for everyone’ encourages amateur astronomers. The book is presented with the usual DK elegance of illustration, plus an amplitude of quantitative descriptions of the contents of space on different scales and the means for investigating them. There are a few simple experiments, titled Get mucky; picture identification leads; Become an expert… offers cross-references; a question at the foot of each spread, with the answer printed upside down. All this encourages the reader.