Wednesday, August 12, 2009

REVIEW: The Heavens Proclaim

The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican, edited by Guy Consolmagno, S.J.

I've been given the opportunity by The Catholic Company to review The Heavens Proclaim.

I was so excited to see this book on the reviewer list - our family has been studying Astronomy for the past couple of months and was looking forward to integrating this book into our study. This is a beautiful book loaded with color pictures and information - both about astronomy and the Vatican Observatory. It has been a useful book to refer to, especially when reconciling the Big Bang Theory with Divine Creation, which the book covers (at least on the surface) in 9 pages.

For me, there were a few disappointments with the book, however. While there is a table of contents, there is no index, which would have come in handy on several occasions. The quality of the photos is not what I would have hoped. Finally, this is a book about the Vatican Observatory, however, many of the heavenly bodies photographed were taken by other observatories or by the Hubble telescope. For such a beautiful and powerful observatory, I had hoped for more pictures from the Vatican Observatory.

I would, despite my disappointments, recommend the book for anyone (especially Catholics) looking for biblical references and the Christian perspective on space study.



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