Openers of distant worlds

Approaches on November 15 - the day when we recognize the names of the laureates of the Enlightener Award 2012. However, while the enlightener's day has not yet come, readers have the opportunity to carefully evaluate each book from short lists.

Two books on astronomy were published in the final of the 2012 Awards in 2012 at once. One of them belongs to the pen of Vladimir Georgievich Surdin, a senior researcher at the State Astronomical Institute named after PC. Sternberg, and addressed to high school students, students, teachers and all lovers of astronomy.

Its name - “intelligence of distant planets” - causes an association primarily with the amazing history of the study of the planets of the solar system. But it is worth taking the book in your hands, turning over, read - and it will become clear that the author’s plan is much wider. Actually, only four chapters out of nine are dedicated to planets and their discoveries, and only one of them - eight classic “wandering luminaries” of the solar system. Three introductory chapters talk about what professional astronomers and amateur astronomers are looking for in the sky and what tools they use for this-but this is a concise but very interesting course in the history of telescopopro! The author practically does not use complex calculations, apparently well, remembering the well-known statement that each formula reduces the number of readers by half. There is no formal definitions in the book (“the heavenly sphere is the imaginary sphere with the center at the location of the observer ...”, etc.). Only the most important terms are deciphered in the ninth, reference chapter, which also includes very useful tables.

The basic concepts, including very difficult, are introduced by Vladimir Surdin as necessary and are explained almost on the fingers. At the same time, the author manages, for example, to show the connection of the angular diameter of the smallest details of the image with the size of the minimum element of the image receiver-grain of the photo emulsion or “pixel” of the PZ-matrix. At a quite affordable level, the principles are given and the achievements of adaptive optics are illustrated, which allows you to receive pictures of almost the same quality from the bottom of the seething “sea” of the earth's atmosphere as from space telescopes. And at the same time, the author draws an unexpected portrait of an observer astronomer, whose full-time uniforms are ... a sheepskin coat and felt boots, and the main advantage of the cold is: it is impossible to warm up under the dome of the observatory, since the image quality will worsen!

Vladimir Surdin explains in detail how and by what principles the names of celestial bodies are given. After reading this book, you will find out why the comet immediately give the name of its discoverer, and you can name the asteroid in honor of the Honored Founder of Science or Art, if the author of the discovery accepts your proposal and presents the necessary rationale for the International Astronomical Union.

As for the stars, then only the most unusual of them have a chance to glorify you: for example, if the luminary will have a huge speed, like a barnard star, or if the whole Golmium of the Galaxy is concentrated in it, like on Pshibelsky Star. And then this will not be a name, but rather an unofficial nickname that will be forgotten in a few decades. It is impossible to buy the name of the star-Vladimir Georgievich explains in detail why all such transactions are a deception or fraud, not yet knowing that after the book was published an ugly episode of “Gift of a star” to some incomprehensible showman will take place within the walls of the Moscow Planetarium.

The famous discussion of 2006, which ended with a decrease in Pluto's status, gave the author the right to expand the traditional definition of the planet as a large body circulating around the star. On equal terms with ordinary planets, he considers the scoretes, such as Cerer and the largest inhabitants of the Kuiper belt, as well as the largest satellites of planets, which are a kind of and unique worlds.

In the relevant chapters that we allow ourselves not to retell, the history of the discovery of these bodies and their physicochemical characteristics revealed by ground-based means and space devices are described. The sixth chapter dedicated to the planets of other stars, their classification and search methods. I must say that it is obsolete faster than all the others: in two years since writing the book, the number of exoplanets has at least doubled ...

A well -written and carefully read text of the book pleases with an almost complete lack of actual errors. Perhaps you can only complain about some repetitions. For example, the history of the opening of the planets is first stated in the first chapter with a binding to their names, and then in more detail - in the fourth chapter.

The undoubted decoration of the book is two color tabs, one of which shows photographs of the most important observatories, and on the other - photographs and drawings of the planets. But the black and white block of the book is characterized by good paper and high print quality.

The main drawback of this beautiful book is its circulation. Four hundred (400) copies are a miserable even in our meager time for good literature. It is felt that the publisher has no influence on a book-firing or for some reason does not want to promote his publications. Meanwhile, the book of Vladimir Surdin is worthy of entering every library of the country.

Read on the website of the "Enlightener": Surdin Vladimir Georgievich . "Intelligence of distant planets." M.: Fizatlit, 2011. Http://premiaprosvetitel.ru/booksautHors/ View/? 42 (entire book, 1–7 chapter)