Sky & Telescope - January 2020 - 57

BOOK REVIEW by Richard Tresch Fienberg

Though She Be But Little,
She Is Fierce
MORE THINGS IN THE HEAVENS
Michael Werner & Peter Eisenhardt
Princeton University Press, 2019
304 pages, ISBN 9780691175546
$35.00, hardcover.

SHAKESPEARE AFICIONADOS will

recognize the title of Mike Werner and
Peter Eisenhardt's new book as part
of a famous line in Hamlet but may
not immediately grasp what the book
is about. The subtitle, "How Infrared
Astronomy Is Expanding Our View of
the Universe," is apt but incomplete.
True, the book explores how observations at wavelengths longer than those
of red light have revealed previously
unknown celestial objects and phenomena, but the real focus of the story is
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which
isn't mentioned on the cover at all.
I suspect this has something to do
with Spitzer's living in the shadow of
the Hubble Space Telescope, which
is not just a household name but a
cultural icon. If so, I hope this book
will help Spitzer become better known,
because the less famous orbiting observatory has transformed our understand-

ing of planets, stars, and galaxies as
fundamentally - if not as visibly (pun
intended) - as Hubble. More Things in
the Heavens makes this evident with
well-written text and abundant color
photos and illustrations accompanied
by good, clear captions. The book is well
edited and is printed on nice paper, but
if you prefer digital you can download
the ebook (ISBN 9780691191966),
which will save you about $15.
Spitzer is a lot smaller than Hubble,
sporting only an 85-centimeter-diameter mirror compared with Hubble's 2.4
meters. But what Spitzer lacks in aperture it more than makes up for in other
ways. Hence the title of this review,
also from Shakespeare (this time from
A Midsummer Night's Dream) and also
quoted in the book.
Werner and Eisenhardt, both at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, have been
involved with Spitzer for decades and
know their subject intimately. (Werner
is coauthor of the article on page 18.)
After a whirlwind tour of the universe
as seen in the infrared, they cover in
detail every aspect of astronomy that
Spitzer has touched, giving due credit to
the scientists whose work they describe
and, thankfully, presenting data in
graphs that have been redrawn for a
popular audience rather than being
lifted straight from the pages of professional journals.
The authors are at their most enthusiastic when explaining research that
wasn't even on the drawing board when
Spitzer was conceived, such as studies
of exoplanet atmospheres and active
galaxies in the ﬁrst billion years of
the universe's existence. Some of their
most beautifully written explanations

of the science are contained in notes at
the end of the book; I'd have preferred
to see those in boxes adjacent to the
relevant text so that more people would
read them.
Two appendixes cover Spitzer's history from conception (as a telescope
mounted in the Space Shuttle's cargo
bay) to launch, as well as technical
details of the spacecraft, its science
instruments, the observing strategy, and
the solar orbit that keeps the telescope
and detectors at the icy temperatures
required to maximize their sensitivity.
Like so many NASA missions, Spitzer
took decades to go from idea to reality,
and I remember the journey well. When
I was a graduate student at the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics in
the 1980s, I helped write the proposal
for what ultimately became Spitzer's
workhorse instrument, the Infrared
Array Camera (IRAC).
The timing of More Things is auspicious but slightly sad: Spitzer is scheduled to be decommissioned on January
30th. But don't be discouraged! Its data
archive will be mined for years by a new
generation of researchers, and the much
larger James Webb Space Telescope,
optimized for infrared observations, is
on track for launch in 2021. The expansion of the universe is accelerating, and
the expansion of our scientiﬁc understanding, thanks to infrared astronomy,
is about to accelerate too!

¢ Former S&T editor in chief RICK FIENBERG is press officer of the American
Astronomical Society. He worked on one
of the first digital cameras for infrared
astronomy, a device that boasted a
whopping 256 pixels.
sk yandtelescope.com * JANUARY 2 02 0

http://www.skyandtelescope.com

Sky & Telescope - January 2020

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