A Good Book Deserves a Revision. Several, Actually...

There's a book in my library that I'm not planning on selling off even if doing so is the only thing that stands between me and skid row: Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper's Guide to the Galaxy(hereinafter referred to as "GttG" for brevity's sake). Written and published just over ten years ago, GttG deals with the Milky Way Galaxy, its' immediate neighbourhood, its' internal structure, and the many assorted "landmarks" that lie scattered throughout.

It serves to this day as a reference guide for SF writers ranging from Rob Sawyer to Christopher L. Bennett, and it's Just That Good in explaining its topic to laypeople like me who barely got through their physical sciences classes. And then there are the maps. Run a Google Images search for "Milky Way Galaxy" and you'll likely stumble across a scan or five from the maps in that book in fairly short order.

What I'd really love to know is why a book that good isn't getting reprinted and -- more importantly to me -- revised on a regular schedule. The people to ask, apparently, are those running the original publishers, Cambridge University Press.

In the 10+ years since its initial publication, we've had plenty of new developments in our knowledge in this book's subject area, including(but not limited to):

• Discoveries of over 100 extrasolar planets whose home-stars range in distance from 15 to 15,000 lightyears away from Sol.
• The distance of stars within 300 lightyears of Sol nailed down with increasing precision by the likes of the ESA HIPPARCOS satellite.
• The structure of our galaxy grown increasingly detailed, including a more precise distance to the nearest edge of the Perseus Arm, the discovery of a barred-spiral core in our Galaxy, and the increased reach in distance of several spiral arms beyond what we knew then.
• And then there's things like this giant "bubble" rising 10,000 lightyears "above" Galactic Equatorial that just got announced today. And we're seeing it from 23,000 lightyears away.

All of that's just scratching the surface. I know there's more that I've forgotten that ought to be mentioned here.

To quote Gretzky again: "It's time." We need a new GttG. Let it be soon, please?

Trying to Connect Some Dots Across the Galaxy...

...and I could use some help in figuring out some possible implications and whatnot. So could james_nicoll, I suspect, for reasons I'll explain momentarily.

In my last posting on a favourite book mapping out our home galaxy, I noted the announcement of a discovery of a giant "plume" extending out of the galactic plane as posted to spaceref.com in this press release. The original announcement site, at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory's web service, is here.

Then I stumble onto three posts on related matters here and here at James' LJ, and another one at one of his acquaintances here.

So, now I'm trying to figure out how some or all of this fits together...and what questions I should be asking next.