Resources

This section provides additional sources of information, should you wish to go beyond the material of "The Exploration of the Earth's Magnetosphere." While most items cited here are meant for non-scientist readers, some of the information should also be useful to those technically oriented. A good library may be helpful in obtaining some of the items.

We welcome suggestions for additions to this section, or indeed to any part of "The Exploration of Earth's Magnetosphere."

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  1. General references:

    Stern, D.P.
    "A Brief History of Magnetospheric Physics before the Spaceflight Era",
    Reviews of Geophysics, 27, p. 103-114, 1989.

    Stern, D.P.
    "A Brief History of Magnetospheric Physics during the Space Age"
    Reviews of Geophysics, 34, p. 1-31, 1996.(Available on the web, linked to the bottom of the "Exploration" home page.)

    Two comprehensive historical reviews, including many technical details and citing between them more than 500 publications. A good starting point for an exploration of the technical literature.

    Segre, Emilio, "From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves"

    Segre, Emilio, "From X-rays to Quarks."

    Both books available from W.H. Freeman and Co. and were first published in 1984 and 1980.

    A concise introduction to the history of physics, by an eloquent Nobel-prize winning physicist. Extremely clear and personal, with appendices that cover technical points which require mathematics. The first book deals with the growth of "classical" physics up to 1895, the second covers modern physics since 1895, a story in which Segre himself was an active participant.

    The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Space, edited by Michael Rycroft.

    A large-format illustrated book ("coffee-table book") filled with interesting and detailed information, a delight for any serious space enthusiast. Only a small part deals with the magnetosphere and with Sun-Earth relations, but coverage of manned and unmanned spaceflight and of their technology and history is truly remarkable.

  2. Books of Historical Interest or on History (many are out of print):

    William Gilbert
    "On the Magnet" (1600), translation by Silvanus Thompson, republished by Basic Books, New York 1958. (Out of print; but an alternative translation, by Paul F. Mottelay, is available from Dover Books, 1991).

    Bern Dibner
    "Oersted and the Discovery of Electromagnetism" by Bern Dibner, Blaisdell, 1962.

    L. Pearce Williams
    "Michael Faraday--A Biography", Basic Books, New York 1965.

    Meadows, A.J.
    "Early Solar Physics," Pergamon Press, 1970.
    Reprints of early articles, including the ones by Schwabe and Carrington cited here in the section on the Sun.

    William Corliss
    "Space Radiation", booklet in series "Understanding the Atom" US Atomic Energy Commission, 1968. A brief introduction to cosmic rays and early magnetospheric physics.

    Helen Wright
    "Explorer of the Universe: A biography of George Elery Hale", Wright, Dutton and Co., 1966, republished by Amer. Inst. Phys. 1994.
    Hale invented the spectroheliograph and discovered the Sun's magnetic fields.

    Karl Hufbauer
    "Exploring the Sun: Solar Science since Galileo" Johns Hopkins Press, 1991.

    Van Allen, J.A.
    "Origins of Magnetospheric Physics", 144 pp., Smithsonian Inst. Press, Washington, DC. 1983.
    An account of the discovery of the radiation belt and the work which led up to it.

    Paul A. Hanle and Von Del Chamberlain, editors
    "Space Science Comes of Age", Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, DC 1981.
    Contains the first news conference about the discovery of the radiation belt.

    Alfred Bester
    "The Life and Death of a Satellite," Little Brown and Co., 1966.
    The story of the early orbiting solar observatories and of the people who built them. Somewhat dramatized, but provides a view of early space research.

    Bruno Rossi
    "Moments in the Life of a Scientist," Cambridge Univ. Press 1990.
    Autobiography of a pioneer of cosmic ray research who also participated in the observational confirmation of Parker's theory of the solar wind.

  3. Other books:

    Robert Eather
    "Majestic Lights--The Aurora in Science, History, and the Arts," American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC 1980. Richly illustrated in color, many details and references.

    Candace Savage
    "The Aurora," Sierra Club, 1995.

    Leon Lederman with Dick Teresi
    "The God Particle--If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?"Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1993.
    The story of electrons, protons and more exotic atomic particles, by a Nobel prize winner: lighthearted, at times irreverent and even corny, but filled with interesting stories.

    Kenneth J.H. Philips
    "A Guide to the Sun", Cambridge U. Press 1992 (paperback edition, 1995). An excellent non-mathematical exposition of all aspects of solar physics.

    John Eddy
    The New Solar Physics", Westview Press, Boulder 1978.

    Kenneth R. Lang
    "Sun, Earth and Sky", Springer-Verlag 1995. A clear popular exposition about the Sun, its features and its effects on Earth and on the Earth's magnetosphere.

    The following are meant for students of space physics:

    Thomas A. Cravens
    "Physics of Solar System Plasmas" 477 pp., Cambridge U. Press, 1997. A thorough exposition based on a university course, for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Good balance of materials, clear exposition.

    Margaret G. Kivelson and Christopher T. Russell (editors)
    "Introduction to Space Physics," Cambridge U. Press, 1994.

    Martin Walt
    "Introduction to Geomagnetically Trapped Radiation," Cambridge U. press, 1994. An introductory text for graduate students.

    John Keith Hargreaves
    "The Solar-Terrestrial Environment", Cambridge U. Press, 1992.

    George K. Parks
    "Physics of Space Plasmas," Addison-Wesley, 1991.

  4. Nontechnical journals, all eminently suitable for school libraries. All the ones listed here have a broader scope but occasionally carry articles on the magnetosphere and on Sun-Earth relationships.

    Scientific American.
    Monthly magazine covering all science and technology, high-level, illustrated in color.
    (415 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10017-1111, USA; http://www.sciam.com/ ;Subscriptions, 1-800-333,1199).

    The New Scientist.
    Britain's main popular science journal, monthly. Articles somewhat shorter than those in "Scientific American", often easier to understand, with many smaller items.
    (IPC Specialist Group, King's Reach Tower, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LS, England; enquiries@newscientist.com; in the US, newscidc@soho.is.com, tel. 1202-331-2080, Washington DC).

    Science News.
    Weekly. Closer in spirit to "The New Scientist", relatively concise but well written.
    (Science Service Inc., 1719 N Street NW., Washington, DC 20036, scinews@scisvc.org).

    Sky and Telescope.
    Monthly, main forum of amateur astronomers, high quality. Covers solar physics, occasionally touches the magnetosphere.
    (Sky publishing Corp., P.O.Box 9111, Belmont, MA 02178-9111, 1-800-253-0245; http://www.skypub.com.

    Earth in Space
    9 issues per year. Educational publication of the American Geophysical Union, written by scientists, concise.
    (Amer. Geophys. Union, 2000 Florida Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20009, 1-800-966-2481; in Europe, AGU European Office, Postfach 49, 37189 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany; http://www.agu.org)

    The Physics Teacher
    Monthly, by the American Association of Physics Teachers
    (AAPT, One Physics Ellipse, College Park MD 20740-3845, tel. 1-301-209-3322)

  5. Technical journals These contain all the scientific findings, but are not easy to understand (at times, even for a scientist). For a more detailed list, see http://igpp.ucla.edu.80/spa/resources.html#newsletter.

    Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR).
    The main scientific publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU); issues devoted to space physics (blue cover) appear monthly, interspersed with issues whose covers are red, green etc. and which cover other areas of geophysics. "JGR Space Physics" is highly technical and contains about 5000 pages per year.

    Geophysical Research Letters
    Also published by AGU, similar in scope to JGR but devoted to the rapid publication of short articles, up to 4 pages long.

    Reviews of Geophysics
    Also by AGU, appears 4-6 times a year, contains review articles. Aims at presentations which can be understood not just by specialists in their areas but also by scientists of other disciplines.

    Eos
    Main membership forum of AGU, weekly in tabloid format, with annual bound volumes available for library use. Contains among others articles on magnetospheric research and new space missions.

    Physics Today
    Main membership forum of the American Institute of Physics, an organization of societies of physicists. Occasional coverage of space and the magnetosphere.

    Nature
    A long-established British journal of science, weekly. Contains news, articles and book reviews.

    Science
    A US publication paralleling "Nature." Contains news of the research community and occasional articles, though the emphasis is on life sciences. Collected initial results of planetary encounters (by the Voyagers, Pioneers etc.) have traditionally appeared in special issues of "Science."

    Space Science Reviews
    By D. Reidel, Holland, main European review journal. Appears 3-5 times a year.

    Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics
    By Pergamon Press in Britain. Stresses the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.

  6. Community Contacts

    A long list of addresses, persons, journals, institutions etc. is described in the home page of the Section on Space Physics and Aeronomy (SPA) of the American Geophysical Union (AGU):

    http://igpp.ucla.edu/spa/

    especially on http://igpp.ucla.edu/spa/resources.html

    Prof. Patricia Reiff of Rice University, Houston, Texas, together with the Houston Museum of Natural Science, has organized presentations of space science to non-scientists over the world-wide web:

    http://space.rice.edu/hmns/connect.html

  7. Additional Web resources:

    Space Physics Division
    Space Physics Division at NASA Headquarters (recently reorganized, but the home page still goes under its old name). Links to many web sites, giving information about space physics projects, satellite missions etc.

    http://umbra.gsfc.nasa.gov/spd/spd.html

    National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC)
    Its space physics home page, contains many links to space missions and their data:

    http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/space/space_physics_home.html

    Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA
    Links to many of its organizations and projects:

    http://hypatia.gsfc.nasa.gov/GSFC_homepage.html

    World Wide Web Virtual Library for Aeronomy/ Solar-Terrestrial Physics and Chemistry.
    By the University of Oulu, Oulu Finland (just below the arctic circle):

    http://www.oulu.fi/~spaceweb/lib/ref.html#Education

    " Space Physics Textbook" also by the University of Oulu, Oulu Finland (somewhat more advanced level)

    http://www.oulu.fi/~spaceweb/textbook/

    Frank Toffeletto's Bookmarks
    Frank is a space scientist at Rice University, Houston, Texas

    http://rigel.rice.edu/~toffo/bookmarks.html

    Dick Lummerzheim's Bookmarks
    Dick is a space scientist at the Univeristy of Alaska, Fairbanks

    http://odin.gi.alaska.edu/~lumm/bookmarks.html

    University of Minnesota Space Physics Home Page

    http://ham.spa.umn.edu/barbara/links.html

    On Sunspots, Solar Eruptions, and the big storm of 13 March 1989

    http://galaxy.cau.edu/tsmith/13Mar89.html

    The Magnetospheric Yellow Pages
    A guide to many institutions, space missions, data sets and what-not.

    http://leadbelly.lanl.gov/spds/SPDS-list-by-URL.html

    Source Page on Plasmas
    Including list of URLs of space plasma research centers and much more

    http://www-plasma.umd.edu/resources.html

    Spacecraft design and spacecraft systems
    By Mike Gruntman, of the University of Southern California (note letters taken out of the word "spacecraft" in the URL.)

    http://ae-www.usc.edu/bio/mikeg/spacecra/spaccrft.html

    Jim Green's Resource Page
    From the National Space Science Data Center

    Additional Resources

"Exploration" home page (index)
Glossary

Official GSFC Home Page ......... logo NASA WWW Home Page

Authors and Curators:

Last updated: December 31, 1998