Books — Michael Hanlon’s The Real Mars (Carroll & Graf, 2004) and Ken Croswell’s Magnificent Mars (Free Press, 2003) both contain outstanding image collections, and Hanlon provides a thoughtful text that includes a history of Mars studies. Joseph Boyce’s The Smithsonian Book of Mars (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002) has fewer images, but explains Mars science to greater depth than Hanlon or Croswell. Two much older books by Michael Carr still offer useful views: The Surface of Mars (Yale University Press, 1981) and Water on Mars (Oxford University Press, 1996).
Web — The best way to stay on top of the adventures of Spirit and Opportunity is via the Mars Exploration Rover web page at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html. JPL also has a Mars exploration page with links to current, past, and future NASA missions at marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov. To keep tabs on what the European Space Agency’s Mars Express is doing, visit www.esa.int/specials/Mars_Express/index.html. You can find many presentations (in PDF format) from the February 2005 Mars Express science conference at sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=36537. While the JPL rover site posts raw images, an easier-to-use interface is at www.lyle.org/mars. British science writer Oliver Morton runs a sporadically updated blog at mainlymartian.blogs.com. Another blog with good homebrew image mosaics and enthusiastic commentary is at www.unmannedspaceflight.com.
Book — For the ambitious, An Introduction to Radio Astronomy (Cambridge University Press, 2002) by Bernard F. Burke and Francis Graham-Smith gives a thorough overview of topics from radio telescopes to pulsars to cosmological radio sources.
Web — The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a great introduction to radio astronomy for those who don’t have a background in the subject at www2.jpl.nasa.gov/radioastronomy. For more information on the James Webb Telescope, check out www.jwst.nasa.gov. To read more on the cosmic infrared background, visit arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/041223 for a report on the Cosmic Infrared Background.
Article — For more on E. E. Barnard’s Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way, see “Barnard’s Milky Way” in Astronomy‘s August 2004 issue.
Web — Explore globulars and dark nebulae in southwestern Ophiuchus — and elsewhere — with the on-line version of E. E. Barnard’s atlas maintained by the Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center at www.library.gatech.edu/barnard. You’ll find a list of the atlas’ dark nebulae on our site at www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2213. NASA’s SkyView virtual observatory, skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov, lets you generate images of any part of the sky at wavelengths from radio to gamma ray. Images created from the Digitized Sky Survey are especially useful for observers looking for challenging targets, such as Palomar 6.
