Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0521621437, Hardcover)

In recent years, meteorites have caught the imagination of scientist and collector alike. An army of people are now actively searching for them in the hot and cold deserts of Earth. Fascinating extraterrestrial rocks in meteorites are our only contact with materials from beyond the Earth-Moon system. Using well known petrologic techniques, O. Richard Norton reveals in vivid color their extraordinary external and internal structures and taking readers to the atomic level, describes the environment within the solar nebula that existed before the planets accreted. Extensively illustrated, this volume is a valuable guide to assist searchers in the field in recognizing the many classes of meteorites and it is a superb reference source for students, teachers and scientists who wish to probe deeper these amazing rocks from space. O. Richard Norton is a contributing editor for Meteorite magazine and the author of The Planetarium and Atmospherium and Rocks from Space (Mountain Press, 1998). For the last 40 years, he has taught astronomy and space sciences at various US institutions.