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As a Twitter addict, I especially enjoy following scientists and science writers and one of my favourite people to follow is Marcus Chown (who also wrote my favourite science book, The Magic Furnace). A few weeks ago I began to notice that he would tweet a series of fascinating science facts under the heading ‘Tweeting the Universe’. These would stop as abruptly as they would start, and, unusually for him, he didn't reply to my questions about them. It turned out to be a delightful project he and Govert Schilling, another well-known science writer from the Netherlands, have been hard at work on. The two drew up a series of ‘tweets’ – paragraphs containing no more than 140 characters – to explain astronomy to a huge stage in very short bursts, which turned into a pleasantly light, chunky, pale blue book. You'll find around ten tweets each on subjects from rainbows to quasars, encompassing a huge breadth of discoveries. To a practiced ‘Twitterer’ the style is distracting as I keep finding ways to further shorten or clarify tweets, and thought this wouldn't make good bedtime reading – but I quickly adapted! One of the best thing is that you get the most startling ideas compressed into one sentence, with no jargon. For instance, "Your best way to see a real Martian face may be to look in a mirror." It comes with a healthy dose of common sense, plus news of future research and space missions planned. The book is like a box of luxury chocolates, all too easy to glut when you should savour. Because of the style, every sentence is an astonishment. The only problem was that a lot of it is the ‘what’ and very little is the ‘how’, but it is a huge impetus to go and find out for myself. In fact, the people I'd most recommend this book to are bloggers and teachers. Pick any tweet, do some Googling, and you'll have a great story. It's truly a book of the modern age. Alice Sheppard
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2009 Yearbook This 132-page special edition features the ultimate observing guide for 2009, a review of all the biggest news stories of 2008, in depth articles covering all aspects of astronomy and space missions for 2009, previews of International Year of Astronomy events and much, much more. U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STOREInfinity Rising  This special publication features the photography of British astro-imager Nik Szymanek and covers a range of photographic methods from basic to advanced. Beautiful pictures of the night sky can be obtained with a simple camera and tripod before tackling more difficult projects, such as guided astrophotography through the telescope and CCD imaging.U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STOREExploring Mars  Astronomy Now is pleased to announce the publication of Exploring Mars. The very best images of Mars taken by orbiting spacecraft and NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers fill up the 98 glossy pages of this special edition!U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STOREMars rover poster  This new poster features some of the best pictures from NASA's amazing Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.U.K. STOREE.U. STOREU.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE |
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