Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

260 RECOMMENDED READING
with the man himself: Immanual Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision (Doubleday,
1950). I also recommend the transcripts of the AAAS debate mentioned
in the text Scientists Confront Velikovsky, edited by Donald Goldsmith
(Cornell University Press, 1977).
In the end, one of astronomy’s most rewarding gifts is simply the stunning
beauty of the universe. There are many wonderful astronomy books
loaded with great pictures; a recent and very good one is astronomer
Mark Voit’s Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe (Harry
N. Abrams, with the Smithsonian Institution and the Space Telescope Science
Institute, 2000, ISBN 0-8109-2923-6). This coffee-table book will
have you thumbing through it again and again, staring in amazement at
the glorious pictures.
The World Wide Web
Or as I like to call it, “The Web of a Million Lies.” For every good
astronomy site, there seem to be a million that are, uh, not so good. But
if you have a guide and a skeptical eye, there are a lot of web sites out
there that will sate your thirst for astronomical knowledge. If these don’t
do it, you can always try your favorite search engine. But knowing the
web as I do, you might want to search it with both eyes in a permanent
squint. Maybe it would be better to just go with the sites listed below.
If I may be so immodest, I’ll start with my own: Bad Astronomy
(http://www.badastronomy.com). You’ll find a few of the same topics covered
in this book and many other as well. There are also links to other
sites that will keep you busy for a long, long time. (Believe me.)
Penn State University meteorologist Alistair Fraser’s Bad Science web
site (http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html) was in many ways
the inspiration for my own. A weather kind of guy, Alistair has created a
site that is a bit more down to Earth than my own.
Bakersfield College astronomer Nick Strobel has put together a wonderful
web site called Astronomy Notes (http://www.astronomynotes.com),
which covers everything from navigating the night sky to the shape and
fate of the universe. I rely on it quite a bit to help explain why things
happen the way they do.
Bill Arnett is not a professional astronomer, but he fooled me into thinking
so. His Nine Planets web site (http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/
nineplanets/nineplanets.html) is an amazingly complete and informative
place to find out just about everything you want to know about the solar
system. Each planet gets its own page as do some moons, and he has a
huge list of links to pictures on every page.