I couldn't read very much of this before my e-arc timed out on me.

Dispatches from Planet 3
by Marcia Bartusiak

I was a bit slow downloading this, and it was unfortunately archived before I got a chance, so I bought a copy to review.

A fascinating collection of essays. Informative and enjoyable.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for approving my request, and apologies for not downloading.

Dispatches from Planet 3 by Marcia Bartusiak is a highly readable collection of wonderfully concise explorations of various topics in astronomy/astrophysics. Each essay is only a few pages long, making the science easily digestible while still informative. Topics include black holes, dark matter and dark energy, the Big Bang, inflation, relativity, and the multi-verse to name just a few.

For an audience that doesn’t regularly read in this area, Dispatches is a great introduction to the field thanks to the brevity and clarity of each piece, and the overall breadth of the collection as Bartusiak moves across time from for instance centuries-old discoveries to Lowell’s Mars canals to the most recent discoveries of exo-planets. For those who do read a lot of such books (I include myself in this category), while much of this will be familiar territory, some will be new, whether because the discovery is so recent or because Bartusiak digs up a rarely-told bit of information from well-trod ground.

Somewhat in that vein, one of the most welcome aspects of Dispatches is how Bartusiak reclaims long overdue acknowledgement for several important figures—most of them women who were overlooked out of prejudice but some who were simply lost to history. Among the ones who finally earn their due recognition amongst the general public are:

• Jocelyn Bell, who in 1967 discovered the data “scruff” that turned out to be the first pulsar and whose name was left out when it came to the 1974 Nobel.
• Beatrice Tinsley, one of the people largely responsible for determining that galaxies were not static objects, and whose career was cut brutally short by cancer at age 40
• Helen Payne, whose downplayed/softened her outlier theory (based on her own calculations) that hydrogen was the most abundant element in the universe due to pressure from her professor (who of course later published a famous paper confirming her theory only a few years later once astronomical evidence had caught up to her math)
• Vesto Slipher, the guy who actually did the grunt work of spectography/astral photography and observation that led to Hubble’s famed discovery that the universe was expanding (at a rate known as the Hubble Constant versus the Slipher Constant)

As an introduction to the major discoveries and theories of astrophysics in the past 100 years or so, Dispatches from Planet 3 makes for an excellent primer, with enough information, despite the concision of each piece, that one could happily stop there, but also engaging enough to convince a good number of its readers I would guess to continue with further, more in-depth reading.

From collegial collaborations to unacknowledged attributions and vindications delayed, Dispatches from Planet 3 uses a joyously inquisitive approach to science to tell the saga of the continuous human journey to greater enlightenment about the mechanics of existence. As a layperson’s survey of astronomy, cosmology, and physics it charts trends in attitudes toward hard sciences as embodied in the naïveté of the hysteria generated by Orson Wells’s War of the Worlds broadcast to the insatiable imaginative possibilities of Gene Roddenberry’s various “Star Trek” series and the pragmatism of Octavia Butler’s Kindred in terms of connections between time and space.

The author encourages readers to select the order of reading these thirty-two essays according to their personal preference, but reading them as numbered offers the benefit of providing an evolutionary momentum of scientific inquiries from Epicurus in the 4th century BCE to the present day. Familiar names like Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and Hubble are placed in context with the significant contributions of lesser-known scientists Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Beatrice Tinsley, Cecilia Helena Payne, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Vera Rubin, Karl Jansky, Vesto Slipher, Chandra (one name says it all like Einstein and Beyoncé), Lisa Randall, and a Midwestern farm boy and a Belgian priest. (No, the last two aren’t the intro to a joke about who walks into a bar—or an observatory.)

The human path to scientific understanding has been grueling, circuitous, and often redundant or ahead of its time and available tools. “There’s no news like old news,” from page 163 is repeatedly validated in the author’s reporting about discarded theories that were verified as fact decades later. Science fiction is constantly being revised and rewritten. So are science facts.

On page 5 Bartusiak writes, “Indeed, our cosmic address is getting excruciatingly long: Planet No. 3, Solar System, Orion Spur on Sagittarius Spiral Arm, Milky Way, Local Cluster, Virgo Supercluster, Universe, Multiverse.” Each location marker zooms farther out from Earth, making it more apparent with every discovery that humans are not the center of existence.

These thirty-two essays include photos, charts, illustrations, diagrams, and an image of correspondence from the 1700s. They are divided into three categories: Celestial Neighborhood, Realm of the Galaxies, and To the Big Bang and Beyond, reflective of the author’s notable affinity for pop culture references. There are notes, a bibliography, acknowledgments, and an index.

NASA human “computer” Katherine Johnson recently celebrated her 100th birthday after having a building named for her, and witnessing the unveiling of her statue at West Virginia State University. Dispatches from Planet 3 honors scientific trailblazers of the past from around the world, examines current exploration challenges, and inspires deeper study. “Star Talk” with Neil DeGrasse Tyson is video content as bait to lure the general public into personal engagement with science. This collection of essays is “Star Writing” that does the same.

Another great book by Marcia Bartusiak

I had already read and reviewed “The Day We Found the Universe” by Marcia Bartusiak and I concluded the reviewed by saying that I would like to read more of her books. I was not disappointed in her latest offering, “Dispatches from Planet 3”. The book isn't just a history of astronomy, it's also a story about astronomers, many of whom are unjustifiably lesser known such as Jane Luu, Beatrice Tinsley, and Margaret Burbidge.

It's not so much a book as a collection of essays but it reads seamlessly. Bartusiak writes in a conversational way and engages the reader. She has a good sense of humor and explains the science very clearly.

I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in science.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

Dispatches from Planet three is an excellent collection of essays by the award-winning science journalist Marcia Bartusiak. Covering everything from the very known, to the somewhat known, to the unknown. Don't let the size of the essays fool you, they're short but they're perfect introductions to the Astronomy and History of Astronomy topics that they are about. Would be great to read to children as well as for yourself.

Quite honestly, this is kind of just an awesome book. I'm both positively biased toward, and hard to please concerning popular science books geared toward astronomy. While I know relatively little about astronomy (sadly), I love it to a startling degree. The stars have always held a distinct fascination for me, and I honestly believe that if my undergraduate university had offered the option, I would have added an Astro major to my program. Alas.

When the opportunity came up to review Marcia Bartusiak's book of short essays about Astronomy, I couldn't have clicked the 'request' button any faster. Not only do I love the stars, I love the opportunity to learn about them from people who do make astronomy and astrophysics the study of their lives. More to the point, the physical scientists that are actually capable of communicating these wonderful ideas and discoveries to social scientists like me are doubly impressive. In the space of thirty-two short essays, Professor Bartusiak manages to transmit a startling amount of information not only about astronomy and astrophysics but about the people and the history of the science. I spent a few very pleasant evenings reading this book and learning about the men and women who have pushed our understanding billions of years through time, that have zeroed in on particles so inconceivably tiny that it boggles the mind to read about them. I read about neutron stars, and quasars, and black holes, and even about time itself and the point at which scientists suspect that it may not have existed, the point at which the rules of physics disintegrate and quantum takes over (I'm referring here to the Big Bang). I learned about Einstein's theories of special and general relativity; I learned about how certain types of stars serve as a cosmological yardstick for measuring distances throughout the vast and growing universe of which we are on insignificant speck.

Professor Bartusiak's writing is concise, it is clear, and it is informative without sounding stuffy or reducing the utterly incredible wonder that is the cosmos to an absolute bore (and trust me there are academics who manage that). I absolutely recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the stars, or even in the general history of science and the natural world. There's something in here for everyone, and I'm quite keen on acquiring a few more of this author's books.

A clever and concise overview of some of the major points in the history of astronomy, broken down into easily digestible chunks, perfect for the reader to dip into when they have a few minutes to spare. The topics covered are diverse, ranging from the reclassification of Pluto to the proof that there was once water on Mars, but in each essay the science is clearly laid out and easy to understand, I was particularly surprised to discover the numerous notable contributions from women in the field and liked that the author did her best to shine a light on some almost forgotten names, as well as the more obvious leaders in the subject.