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Just Visiting This Planet: Merlin Answers More Questions about Everything under the Sun, Moon, and Stars
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Product Description
In a companion volume to Merlin's Tour of the Universe, here is a completely new collection of questions and answers about the cosmos for stargazers of all ages. Whether waxing about Earth and its environs, the Sun and its stellar siblings, the world of light, physical laws, or galaxies near and far, Merlin--a fictional visitor from Planet Omniscia--is easy to understand, often humorous, and always entertaining.
Merlin fields a wide range of questions from many curious mortals, and in so doing draws on his own vast knowledge as well as the expertise of many close friends, including Archimedes, Galileo, Einstein, and Santa.
So far, Merlin has not been stumped, responding to questions on mysteries such as:
Delightfully illustrated throughout, Just Visiting This Planet is a skywatcher's book for lovers of the universe by one of its brightest lights.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #592268 in Books
- Published on: 1998-07-13
- Released on: 1998-07-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Merlin, a scholar visiting Earth from the planet Omniscia in the Andromeda galaxy, is familiar to readers of Star Date magazine, published by the McDonald Observatory. Just Visiting This Planet is the second collection of questions and answers written by Merlin's alter ego, Neil de Grasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium. (The first collection was Merlin's Tour of the Universe.) Merlin is supersmart, sort of sassy, and he'll answer almost any question about the universe and the curious things in it. He's also really old, having rubbed elbow equivalents with the likes of Archimedes, Galileo, Einstein, and Santa Claus. In this volume, you can find Merlin's explanations for easy puzzlers such as "How many galaxies are visible to the naked eye?" and "Who discovered the planet Saturn?" The smarty-pants extraterrestrial also tackles toughies like "If aliens exploded our moon, what effect would it have on us?" and "What is the meaning of 'apparent magnitude'?" Amateur astronomers and weekend stargazers alike will find a wealth of trivia with which to astound dinner guests, and those who like their science in easily digestible chunks will be pleased--sometimes Merlin gives one-word answers! If you're looking for long explanatory essays, look for a more loquacious little green man. --Therese Littleton
Review
Tyson has created a space-age Merlin. An astrophysicist and educator, Tyson weaves together imaginative with straightforward science. -- USA Today
From the Publisher
"Tyson has created a space-age Merlin. An astrophysicist and educator, Tyson weaves together imaginative with straightforward science." --USA Today
Customer Reviews
Great Q&A On Outer Space
I love to ponder the mysteries of outer space, from planetary factoids to quasar theories. This book is chock full of all this and everything in between. The Q&A are taken from a monthly astronomy magazine and written from the perspective of "Merlin" who is from the Andromeda galaxy. Merlin offers a fun and lively way to discover outer space. I consider this book to be a nice, light read for all ages.
