Higher Than Everest: An Adventurer's Guide to the Solar System

Preface; 1. Higher than Everest; 2. Higher than that? - Other high peaks of Mars; 3. Descent into the Martian deep; 4. The cliffs of coprates; 5. A polar crossing; 6. The other Alps - climbing Mt. Blanc; 7. Pico peak - Monadnock of the moon; 8. The great Copernicus traverse; 9. Maxwell, mountains of mystery; 10. Volcanoes of Venus; 11. The cliff of discovery; 12. Descent into the maelstrom; 13. An Ionian adventure; 14. Mountain climbing in pizzaland; 15. Under the frozen sea; 16. Snowboarding through Saturn's rings; 17. Titan's tarry seas; 18. Climbing the cliff of Miranda; 19. The Yellowstone of the solar system; 20. All nine.

Paul Hodge is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington and Editor in Chief of the Astronomical Journal. For many years he has taught a popular undergraduate course on the planets, from which this book originated.

'This book provides a spectacular tour of the most exciting surface features in the Solar system and achieves its objective brilliantly ... Paul Hodge has written an adventure story in a very factual and entertaining way, and this book deserves to be a bestseller.' Jerry Workman, Popular Astronomy 'Astronomers are explorers, a fact underlined by Paul Hodge in Higher than Everest ... Instead of bombarding the reader with facts and familiar images, Hodge encourages us to imagine ourselves out there actually climbing about on the surfaces of planets and moons. He takes his intrepid traveller on imaginary scrambles up the solar system's highest volcano (Olympus Mons, on Mars), dusty traverses of the lunar crater Galileo, and chilling dives under the deepest ice floes (on Saturn's moon Europea). Each adventure is hypothetically possible with modern technology. He compares cliff climbs on Jupiter's moon Miranda with the ascent of the Eigerwand in Switzerland. He stresses the similarities between South Africa's Drakensberg mountains and Io's Mount Euboea. And throughout he emphasises the beauty and the thrill of what's still out there to be discovered.' New Scientist 'Let astronomer Paul Hodge take you on an imaginary tour of the most spectacular sites in the Solar System ... you will have your breath taken away, without even leaving your home.' Europe & Astronomy 'This book is a sound exposition of the physical features of the different planets and their peculiarities, and deals with each landscape (and space vista) as if you really can trek through it ... It is great fun, especially for the more ambitious armchair explorers. Hodge has refined this approach through teaching and as an excursion guide it could enliven many a class in planetary geology.' Astronomy & Geophysics '... a light-hearted adventurer's guide to our planet's immediate neighbourhood ... will appeal to armchiar alpinists everywhere ...'. Nature 'As a concise explorer's travel guide to the