Review by Choice Review
Much of Catching Stardust concerns comets, yet readers may not recognize the book's comet photographs as such without consulting the captions. Starkey, a geochemist and cosmic dust expert who worked on international space missions, concentrates on the tiny solid body (nucleus) at the heart of a comet. Her book contains no standard photographs of a comet with its brilliant head and tail. Here, comets are not classical objects of wonder but fodder for chemistry and allied sciences. Close-ups reveal the structure of cometary nuclei photographed by interplanetary spacecraft. Dust particles from comets and asteroids are emphasized; Starkey explains how analyses of these microscopic objects are crucial to learning how Earth and other planets formed. Ice in comets and its possible relation to the source of water on Earth are also explored. The book's highlights are step-by-step accounts of NASA's Stardust mission, which returned a capsule with comet dust that landed by parachute in Utah, and of the European Space Agency's Rosetta, which accompanied a comet on its orbit around the sun and dropped a lander probe to briefly study the nucleus. A unique and valuable read. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers.--Stephen P Maran, American Astronomical Society
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Comets and asteroids have had a major impact on the evolution of the Earth. Shortly after the birth of our solar system, leftover material, some older than the sun, began to bombard Earth with the building blocks of life carbon, oxygen isotopes, hydrogen, nitrogen, and water. Until 2006, when the Stardust space probe returned to Earth with dust from the tail of a comet and interstellar cosmic dust, scientists had to rely on meteorites found on Earth and through telescopes for their observations. By studying the composition of collected rocks, scientists can determine where they formed and surmise their history. Starkey, herself a cosmochemist, was part of the team that examined the materials returned from Stardust and helped prepare a scientific instrument used in the Rosetta space mission that caught up to and hitched a ride on an asteroid in 2014 as it headed on its orbit toward the sun. This important first for scientists captivated the public's interest during the lander's heart-stopping descent to the comet. Starkey makes this dense subject readily accessible to all, while downplaying her own significant contributions. A top-rate popular-science title.--Dan Kaplan Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Geologist Starkey expertly details the current understanding of comets and asteroids, and how they function as snapshots of the universe at an earlier point in time, thereby providing insight into such areas as the formation of the solar system and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Starkey begins with an explanation of how these objects are formed, classified, and studied, and how scientists use the information obtained from them. This background allows for a fuller appreciation of the ingenuity and value of the NASA Stardust, ESA (European Space Agency) Rosetta, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa space-probes, discussed at length. In addition to these recent fact-finding missions, all of which Starkey was involved with, she discusses how a wide range of topics, from the motion of planets to the composition of cosmic dust, relate to the study of comets and asteroids, and concludes with how these studies might aid humanity should Earth collide with an extraterrestrial object. Throughout, Starkey's explanations of scientific terms and concepts are generally clear and understandable, aided by a useful glossary. The book provides an informative and valuable introduction to the field, from an author clearly knowledgeable and passionate about her work. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An exploration of "the small space objects such as the comets and asteroids that orbit the Sun."Popular cosmology books usually focus on stars, the sun, and planets, giving short shrift to everything in between. In an expert account, Starkey, a British geologist and space scientist who lives in California, argues that particles, rocks, asteroids, and comets deserve more attention. The Earth has changed a great deal since the birth of the solar system over 4 billion years ago, but cosmic dust from the birth is still out there along with larger bodies. Comets and asteroids have their own histories, and some dust has existed since near the beginning of the universe, so studying them "means we can understand how our planets were put together and what they contain." Readers will pay close attention when the author asks a significant question: Where did Earth acquire water and the carbon-containing organic compounds essential for life? She reminds us that scientists believe that planets formed from clumping dust grains that swirled around a hot central mass that became the sun. Pummeled by a rain of other small bodies (planetesimals) and heated by volcanism, the early Earth was too hot for water to condense and complex organic chemicals to form. Only beyond the orbit of Mars were temperatures low enough for volatiles (water, methane, ammonia) to solidify into lighter planetesimals, comets, which often migrated inward and fell upon Earth. Readers familiar with NASA's robots' landing on Mars and missions to the outer planets may be surprised at Starkey's later chapters, which describe probes sent to comets that landed and scooped up samples to return to Earth to educate (and confuse) researchers.A successful introduction to the hitherto neglected bits and pieces of our solar system. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
