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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

The second edition of Astronomy Today is two chapters and 48 pages shorter than its predecessor. All chapters have been updated in content and several have seen significant internal reorganization. This book is written for students who have taken no previous college science courses and who will likely not major in physics or astronomy. The text is suitable for both one-semester and two-semester courses. We present a broad view of astronomy, straightforwardly descriptive and without complex mathematics.

(Extracted from the preface).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-About the Authors.

-Brief Contents.

-Contents.

-Preface.

-1. Charting the Heavens: The Foundations of Astronomy.

-2. The Copernican Revolution: The Birth of Modern Science.

-3. Radiation: Information from the Cosmos.

-4. Spectroscopy: The Inner Workings of Atoms.

-5. Telescopes: The Tools of Astronomy.

-6. The Solar System: An Introduction to Comparative Planetology.

-7. The Earth: Our Home in Space.

-8. The Moon and Mercury: Scorched and Battered Worlds.

-9. Venus: Earth's Sister Planet.

-10. Mars: A Near Miss for Life.

-11. Jupiter: The Giant of the Solar System.

-12. Saturn: Spectacular Rings and Mysterious Moons.

-13. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto: The Outer Worlds of the Solar System.

-14. Solar System Debris: Keys to Our Origin.

-15. The Formation of the Solar System: The Birth of Our World

-16. The Sun: Our Parent Star.

-17. Measuring the Stars: Giants, Dwarfs, and the Main Sequence.

-18. The Interstellar Medium: Gas and Dust between Stars.

-19. Star Formation: A Traumatic Birth.

-20. Stellar Evolution: From Middle Age to Death.

-21. Stellar Explosions: Novae, Supernovae, and the Formation of Heavy Elements.

-22. Neutron Stars and Black Holes: Strange States of Matter.

-23. The Milky Way Galaxy: A Grand Design.

-24. Normal Galaxies: The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe.

-25. Active Galaxies and Quasars: Limits of the Observable Universe.

-26. Cosmology: The Big Bang and the Fate of the Universe.

-27. The Early Universe: Toward the Beginning of Time.

-28. Life in the Universe: Are We Alone?

-Appendices.

-Glossary.

-Credits for Photographs.

-Index.

-Star Charts.

-Answers to Self-Test.

OUR REVIEW

For those who find Astronomy: A Beginner's Guide to the Universe insufficient for their taste, the other great work by the same authors, Astronomy Today, is an important step forward in the degree of detail offered to the readers. In actual fact, the former work is a reduced version of the latter, so that this one has all its virtues and even more, since it supplies a great amount of information for those readers who want to enter this amazing world of astronomy seriously. The book, focused as a supporting text for a course in astronomy, is wonderfully distributed and designed. Each chapter includes previous approaches, summaries, questionnaires, problems and projects, etc.

Completely updated, this is one of the most comprehensive and adequate books to learn astronomy up to an advanced level, previous to any other university career. Written by expert professors, used to seeing their pupils communicate and react, Astronomy Today has everything we need to know. Furthermore, the general text, the interludes and even the supporting charts as well as the exquisite selection of photographs, give us the necessary incentive to make the reading of this work a true pleasure.