Just Visiting This Planet: Merlin Answers More Questions about Everything under the Sun, Moon, and Stars

Merlin, a scholar visiting Earth from the planet Omniscia in the Andromeda galaxy, is familiar to readers of Star Date magazine, published by the McDonald Observatory. Just Visiting This Planet is the second collection of questions and answers written by Merlin's alter ego, Neil de Grasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium. (The first collection was Merlin's Tour of the Universe.) Merlin is supersmart, sort of sassy, and he'll answer almost any question about the universe and the curious things in it. He's also really old, having rubbed elbow equivalents with the likes of Archimedes, Galileo, Einstein, and Santa Claus. In this volume, you can find Merlin's explanations for easy puzzlers such as "How many galaxies are visible to the naked eye?" and "Who discovered the planet Saturn?" The smarty-pants extraterrestrial also tackles toughies like "If aliens exploded our moon, what effect would it have on us?" and "What is the meaning of 'apparent magnitude'?" Amateur astronomers and weekend stargazers alike will find a wealth of trivia with which to astound dinner guests, and those who like their science in easily digestible chunks will be pleased--sometimes Merlin gives one-word answers! If you're looking for long explanatory essays, look for a more loquacious little green man. --Therese Littleton