Anyone who has walked through the children’s section of the local book store has seen Dorling Kindersly’s Eyewitness series of books. They are pretty hard to miss, each being the size of a large notebook. Books in the series include: Stowaway, Exploded (The Exploded series looks at the interiors of objects such as buildings or airplanes) and The Way Things Work. If you get a chance, take a look at the books. They are bright, colorful, and very informative.
Being a 90’s kind of company, Dorling Kindersley set up a subsidiary known as DK Multimedia and began transferring their titles to the computer screen. Since its inception in 1991, DK Multimedia has released The Way Things Work, The Ultimate Human Body, Eyewitness Encyclopedia of Nature, Stowaway, and Eyewitness History of the World just to name a few.
DK Multimedia’s latest release, Eyewitness Encyclopedia of Space and the Universe, takes the user to places only dreamed of before. You can watch the launch of the Space Shuttle, fly over the “canals” of Mars, or see what part of the sky the Andromeda Galaxy will be in in the year 3000 A.D.
The program (hereafter referred to as Space and the Universe) requires no hard drive space; it will run directly off of the CD. As is the case, if you install certain data files on your hard drive, it will improve the program’s performance. These data files, which take up about 7.6 MB of hard drive space, are all kept in one folder on the CD for easy installation. The CD also comes with copies of QuickTime 2.1, QuickTime Power Plug, Sound Manager 3.1, and the Sound control panel.
Space...the Final Frontier
After you open the program you are greeted by a beautifully rendered main menu which lets you access the various components of the program. There are 13 main areas and four personal preference/navigation areas.
The main areas are: The Star Dome, the Space Race, Space Hardware, Who’s Who, Activities, Cosmology, 3D Models, Internet Sites, the Quiz Master, Sky Watching, the History of Astronomy, The Universe, and the Tech Manual. The Personal/Navigation sections include the Index of Articles, the Preferences, the Help Screen, and the Backtrack tool.
The Star Dome is a virtual observatory that will accurately map any part of the sky, from anywhere on earth during any time period from 3000 B.C. to 7000 A.D. Using the control panel you can: set the date and time, search for objects in the sky, label the objects that you see, look in different directions, and even find out information of the objects that you see. There are hundreds of objects to find, so you can spend hours tracking down celestial objects. And if that were not enough, there are two printable documents that help you find things to see. The Tips for Time Travelers gives you events of the past and future to look at (the super-nova of 1054 that created the Crab Nebula) while Step-by-Step Astronomy gives lessons on how to use the Star Dome and find interesting objects. Although this segment is not as versatile or as powerful as Red Shift, it is easier to use and much more user friendly.
The Race for Space is a history of space flight from the first steps of the Sputnik program to the final steps of Apollo 11 and beyond. The Race for Space is split into two sections. First Steps covers history from early rockets (such as the V-2) to the end of the Mercury program. Race for the Moon covers from the time of Voskhod (the first multi-man missions) to the Apollo 13 disaster (including audio of the real James Lovell saying those famous words “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”).
The Space Hardware section takes a close look at the rockets and other paraphernalia that is used in space missions. You can look at a weather satellite, study the flight path of Voyager 2, or study a close up picture of the Challenger launch to see the black smoke that signaled the impending destruction of the shuttle.
Who’s Who gives you brief biographies of famous people connected with space (such as John Glenn, Robert Goddard and, of course, Albert Einstein), while Activities supplies you with two games to play (piloting a L.E.M. or building a Saturn V rocket).
The 3D models allow the user to study any one of five spacecraft (Including the Mir space station and the Space Shuttle), and the Internet Sites gives you access to three pages of Web sites that will be of interest to amateur astronomers. The Quiz Master allows you to test your knowledge in three areas: space, missions, and technology.
Sky Watching allows the user to study the different ways that scientists observe the universe. This section covers microwave, x-ray, infrared, gamma ray, ultraviolet, radio, and space astronomy. This section also has a portion devoted to astronomy in practice (including a guide to becoming an amateur astronomer).
The Cosmology section deals with the more theoretical side of astronomy. Cosmology is the study of the birth, large scale structure, and the evolution of the universe. In this section you will find the theory of relativity, the big bang theory, warped space, Einstein's elevator, quarks, gravitons, and a host of other theoretical information.
The History section covers topics from early astrophysics to the birth of cosmology. In this section of the program you will find Arabic and Greek astronomy, as well as orbital theory and the heliocentric universe (a universe in which the sun is the center).
The Tech Manual is a guide for the modern space traveler. This section contains articles on living in space (astronaut training, living in space, and colonies), space travel (planning a course, maneuvering, and ground control), and space technology (computer power, launching a satellite, and space debris).
The Universe section is, in our opinion, the most interesting portion of the program. The Universe is split into 5 topics: The Planets (study our planets up close and personal), Stars and Star Clusters (What is the difference between a nova and a supernova?), Deep Space (Why is the Andromeda galaxy called “M-31”?), The Cosmos (What is the universe made of?), and the Solar System Explained (How was the solar system born?).
..to discover strange new worlds...
At first glance, it may seem like the information displayed by the program is very basic, but do not be fooled. Digging deeper into the articles (through the use of conveniently located navigation buttons and hyperlinks) will bring forth a wealth of information. An article on the solar system can eventually lead you to discover the difference between a solar day and a sidereal [SEYE-di-REE-al] day (A solar day uses the sun as a timepiece while a sidereal day uses distant stars.) There is a wealth of information in here, all you need is the curiosity to hunt it down. With over 160 articles to browse (comprising over 80,000 words of text), this program will keep the budding astronomer busy for hours.
Mr. Sulu, plot a course...
If you just want to browse the articles, the index is the place to start. The index is an alphabetical list of every piece of information in the program. DK also included a set of filters in the index so you can find articles by an A to Z list, by a content outline of the program, or find an animation, 3D model, picture, or sound byte.
If you just want to cruise the program, there are navigation buttons at the bottom of the articles that will transport you a level deeper into the information. There is also a next button that will take you to the next article in the section and a see also button that will take you to related articles.
Most articles have hyperlinks to a glossary. If you click on a word in red, the definition of that word will pop up. If you have the program set to narration, you will also hear a voice pronounce the word for you.
If you don’t feel like reading, most of the main articles have a speaker button. When this button is pressed, a man or a woman’s voice will read the article to you. This is a great feature for those who have trouble reading (the visually impaired or those with visual processing problems) or those who do not know how certain words should be pronounced.
Put it on the main viewer...
The graphics seem a bit cartoonish but this belies the wealth of information they convey. The computer rendered pictures are colorful, easy to look at, and are as informative as the illustrations in the Eyewitness book series. Most of the graphics have their parts labeled so you can tell a comet’s dust tail from its gas tail.
The animations are very easy to watch. They range in size from 1/4 to 1/2 screen and look like something out of a PBS documentary. The animations are slow enough that the user can easily comprehend the information being displayed. The video is 1/4 screen QuickTime movies and even the old movies are crisp and sharp. The audio is clean and clear, and there are transcripts of most of it so you can read along if you care to. With over two hours of audio, 50 animations, 20 videos, and more than 400 still photos, you can spend quite a bit of time just going through the multimedia portions of this program.
Summary
The only problem with the program is that some of the load times are exceptionally long. There were a few times where we had thought the computer had frozen. This is a minor complaint and only detracted a little from the overall enjoyment of the disk.
This program is a must for any parent whose child expresses an interest in astronomy. It is also a wonderful tool for teachers to use in any unit based on astronomy. There are plenty of visuals to keep the child’s attention and the amount of knowledge contained in the program will keep the older kids coming back to the disk for quite some time. Don’t be fooled by Spaces cartoonish exterior. Underneath is a warehouse of interesting facts and figures that will keep everyone interested for hours on end. This program could open up a whole new universe for your child and take him or her (gee, you don’t see this coming a mile away, do you?) where no one has gone before.
Pros
• Loads of information
• Interesting bits of historical video and audio
