No, it’s just that the book was published in 1998. A science text appropriately relying on the latest information, but all the info is from 10 years ago. This is a bad idea when you stop to think about it.

Since 1998, a few things have happened in astronomy that might be really relevant to  book on planets. Satellites have provided us our first clear pictures of Mercury. New moons were discovered around our gas giants, and amazing new information became available about the ones that were already known.  We landed a cute little rover on Mars, and  completely revised our understanding of this neighbor planet. Dozens of “extrasolar” planet systems were discovered, completely revising our understanding of those neighbor suns. Oh yes, Neptune became the farthest planet from the sun when poor Pluto was downgraded. 1998′s stuff doesn’t stand a chance. 

This illustrates perfectly why publishing dates do matter, and why we librarians need to keep an eye on these things. It looked like a perfectly new and useful book on the shelf when I picked it up, so I’m assuming students looking for resources for, say, a school report might do the same. And one can’t be mad at the author; Mr. Lewis would likely agree that this edition is out of date and  may not contain entirely accurate information. So who’s job is it to stand between me and a useless book? The librarian, of course, armed with a good and oft-applied discard policy. I would think twice about keeping that book in my school library, and, if I may suggest, the public library shouldn’t want it either.

Related link (and very cool): The Daily Galaxy lets you listen to some outstandingly beautiful astro-tinkling as the Cassini Spacecraft passes through Saturn’s rings (2004).