Astronomy Book (The)

Reasons we sell this publication:

Answers in Genesis is pleased to offer The Astronomy Book as part of the Wonders of Creation series. We sell this book because it reveals many interesting facts about our universe, as well as presents important information that shows that what we actually observe in the cosmos is consistent with a recent six-day creation.

The book is written from a biblical creation perspective and denies any possibility of evolution or billions of years. There is a good biblical introduction and a nice refutation of astrology. There is a fine discussion of the space program. There is a biblical theme on the infinity of God, and a good explanation of the size of the universe. The book introduces a number of biblical concepts—such as planets being defined biblically as stars, and why the big bang is anti-biblical. There is a good description of the uniqueness of the earth, and several good young-universe indicators and evidences of special creation are used—the disintegration of comets, internal heats of the giant planets, the low heat of Uranus, etc. There is also some good information about the planets, and a nice discussion of Mars and the search for life.

Problems to be aware of:

• p. 8: “The size of the universe has never been measured.” But, the size of the visible universe has been estimated at about 92 billion light years.
• p. 8: The sun is said to be 100 million miles away (here and throughout the book). The actual distance is about 93 million miles.
• p. 9: “At this distance, light traveling at 186,000 mps would take 2 million years to reach us.” This infers that any light we see from the Andromeda Galaxy has been traveling for 2 million years, which is incorrect.
• p. 9: “The independent galaxy nearest the Milky Way is the Andromeda Galaxy.” It’s certainly the largest nearby galaxy, but it is not really “independent.” It’s part of the Local Group.
• p. 11: “The maximum distance for detecting parallax is about 600 light-years from the earth.” This is out of date. It’s now about 2,000 light-years.
• p. 12: “Farthest object seen to date: quasars (as much as 20 billion light-years away)” The current record holders for most distant objects are galaxies, not quasars.
• p. 12: “Farthest from the sun: Pluto” “Coldest surface … Longest Year: Pluto” This is now out-of-date. Pluto is no longer considered a planet by the new IAU definition.
• p. 13: “Temperature at center [of the sun]: unknown; may be millions of degrees”. The temperature at the center of the sun can be “observed” by neutrinos. This indicates a temperature of about 15 million degrees.
• p. 16: “The [big bang] explosion supposedly blasted matter out through space…” This is a straw-man argument. The big bang model does not actually teach this, but rather space expanded from an extremely dense state and continues to expand today.
• p. 17: “The idea of an expanding universe and the belief in the big bang are related. . . . Thus, there is no proof that the universe is expanding.” There are biblical passages that infer an expanding universe such as Isaiah 40:22? Many passages seem to indicate universal expansion. Universal expansion seems very likely on both Scriptural and scientific grounds.
• p. 18: “The moon takes about one month to orbit the earth, or more precisely 29 ½ days.” This is misleading. This is a synodic month, not sidereal. It actually takes 27.3 days.
• p. 20: “Sometimes called the “Newtonian reflector, the reflector . . .” This is misleading. The Newtonian is one kind of reflector—and the first to be invented.
• p. 21: “When you buy a reflector, look for a power of less than 100 times (100 X) or so . . .” This is misleading. The power depends on the eyepiece (which can be easily changed).
• p. 21: “Saturn’s rings (an exploded moon or moons)” This is a conjecture not a definition. We don’t know that the rings are the result of an explosion.
• p. 23: “. . . the lunar phases move across the sky from right to left.” The statement is misleading. The moon goes from East to West (left to right facing South) relative to the horizon. The moon moves relative to the stars in the opposite direction.
• p. 25: The author indicates that archeological ruins of the Tower of Babel now exist near Baghdad. This is a conjecture and has not been proven.
• p. 25: The author says that God destroyed the Tower of Babel. The Bible does not teach this; rather, it states simply that God confused the languages and that the people stopped building the Tower.
• p. 38: “The moon turns on its axis once every 29 ½ days . . .” This is not true; sunrise to sunrise is 29 ½ days, but the moon turns on its axis every 27 ⅓ days.
• p. 40: The diameter of the sun is given as 1 million miles. This is very imprecise; it is closer to 865,000 miles.
• p. 40: “The smallest sunspot is several times the size of earth.” Actually, a typical one is about the size of earth, so the smallest ones would be a bit smaller than the earth.
• p. 40: “. . . Alpha Centauri is surrounded by other dimmer stars which are invisible . . .” This is misleading. The two main stars that comprise Alpha Centauri are both bright—but are very close together. A third star (Proxima) is fainter, but can be seen in a small telescope.
• p. 41: A photo of a solar prominence is incorrectly labeled as a solar flare.
• p. 42: The neutrino argument is out-of-date. Scientists (with newer detectors) now detect 100% of the neutrinos expected from nuclear fusion. The evidence is therefore consistent with nuclear fusion as the power source of the sun, and not with solar collapse.
• pp. 42–43: The figure caption on p.42 and statement on p. 43 that astronomers have measured the shrinkage of the sun is not well-established. Modern high-precision instruments detect no true shrinkage.
• p. 49: “Since Pluto has a moon of its own, it is obviously a planet.” This doesn’t follow logically. Many asteroids have moons, and so do many trans-Neptunian object (TNOs). Some planets don’t have moons. So, this is a very dubious criterion, and doesn’t agree with the IAU’s new definition of a planet.
• p. 53: In this section, the author argues that black holes don’t actually exist. This argument against black holes seems to be that they are the final state of stellar evolution, which he says has never been observed. In fact, the evidence for black holes is independent of stellar evolution theories (such as the giant black holes in the center of galaxies, which are more of a problem for secular theories than an expectation). Secondly, although we would agree that stellar evolution in general is dubious, the one aspect that we do observe is supernovae. And it is the supernovae that can result in a black hole. Such events do happen.
• p. 55: The author endorses CDK (decay of the speed of light) without reservations. However, most creationists believe that this theory has significant problems.
• p. 55: The lower caption refers to an exploding star, but the image is of a galaxy, not an exploding star.
• p. 56: The figure caption says that “The Ring Nebula is a huge cloud of gases formed by the explosion of the star in the center of the picture.” First, the Ring Nebula was not formed by an explosion of a star. Rather, it is a very gentle expansion of the outer envelope. Second, the figure is not a picture of the Ring Nebula.
• p. 57: There is a problem with the terms nova/supernova. It’s the supernova that results in the death of the star. Novae do not destroy the star—many are recurring, in fact.
• p. 58: “Only a minority of stars including the sun has escaped severe destruction.” This sentence doesn’t make any sense; most stars have not been destroyed.
• p. 59: “These stars are clearly dying because they are unstable.” Variable stars (like Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars) have a very stable and predictable cycle of pulsation. It doesn’t follow that they are “dying.”
• p. 59: “. . . it is more reasonable to interpret the cloud as debris thrown off in partial explosions of this star.” This is not very likely. Expelled portions of a star would be hydrogen and helium—not heavy elements of the kind presumably around Beta Pic.
• p. 60: [The rings of Saturn] “. . . apparently resulted from the explosion of one or more moons.” This is a possibility, but only one possibility. God may have made the rings much as they are now so that we could enjoy their beauty.
• p. 60: “These hypothetical moons are called shepherd moons.” Shepherd moons are definitely real—there’s nothing hypothetical about them. They are on solid theoretical ground, and have been observed as well (e.g., around Saturn’s F-ring and surrounding each ring of Uranus). They have nothing to do with the broad sheet rings of Saturn and cannot prevent the sheet-rings from spiraling inward.
• p. 60: “. . . the ring-confining moons . . . have not been observed.” This is not true; there are photos of them.
• p. 62: The notion that the asteroid belt cannot last more than 10,000 years due to collisions is very unlikely in our opinion. The space between asteroids is large compared to the size of asteroids. It may be a young-age indicator, but seems to be overstated in the text.
• p. 62: The idea of the asteroids being the result of an exploded planet is perhaps possible, but far from a certainty. Caution is warranted.
• p. 63: The author claims that cratering is always asymmetric. We must be careful of absolute claims (all, every, none, etc). Venus seems to have symmetric cratering. The moon IO does, since it has essentially no craters. We suspect that many of the outer moons have roughly the same cratering on all sides.
• p. 69: “You may be able to count up to 100 meteor trails a minute.” This is highly unlikely unless it’s a meteor STORM. Even the Perseid meteor shower only gets up to 100 meteors per hour, which may be what the author meant here.
• p. 69: There is some misuse of terms in this section. There is no distinction made between a meteor (the bright trail you see), a meteoroid (the rock itself), and a meteorites (the rock itself upon impact.)
• p. 72: This page is now completely out-of-date. Astronomers have now found around 300 planets beyond our solar system. Most of these have been detected indirectly, but some have been directly seen.
• p. 73: This page is now completely out-of-date. Other solar systems do exist. The claim that Alpha Centauri has two dim stars is incorrect. It has two bright stars, and one dimmer one.