Astronomy for Beginners
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2020
Pages: 726
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Too many textbooks leave the students gasping, “Do I need to know all this?”
Astronomy for Beginners isn’t intended to be an encyclopedia. It’s intended to be an introduction, so that it’s short, but it covers the essentials. It’s also written to accommodate how today’s students learn about the world around them, and to be user-friendly for their instructors. Above all, it stresses what everyone needs to know about science: that the Universe follows orderly, predictable laws, and that we human beings can learn these laws, with careful observation, logic, and reason, although we will always still need to test our understanding by experiment—or in other words, by trying things out.
For Both Students and Instructors
Chapter 1: Why Study Science, If You’re Interested in Something Else?
Chapter 2: Powers of Ten and Scientific Notation
Chapter 3: Units, Light-Years, and Look-Back Time
Chapter 4: Proportions: A Quick Tour of Space and Time
Chapter 5: The Cosmic Calendar
Chapter 6: Classical Astronomy: the Positions and Motions of Objects in the Sky
Chapter 7: What is Science? An Introduction to Scientific Method
Chapter 8: The Motions of the Planets and the Beginning of Science: A History of Human Ideas
Chapter 9: Matter and Energy
Chapter 10: Light and Spectra
Chapter 11: More Tricks of the Light: Other Ways Astronomers Read Information in Starlight
Chapter 12: Telescopes
Chapter 13: Eyes, Small Telescopes, and Photography
Chapter 14: The Solar System
Chapter 15: Exoplanets: Planets of Other Stars
Chapter 16: Planet Earth
Chapter 17: Moon Phases and Eclipses
Chapter 18: Earth’s Moon
Chapter 19: Mars
Chapter 20: Cosmic Debris: Asteroids and Comets
Chapter 21: Mercury, Venus, and Atmospheres
Chapter 22: The Outer Planets
Chapter 23: The Sun and Nuclear Energy
Chapter 24: The Stars
Chapter 25: The H-R Diagram and the Lives of the Stars
Chapter 26: Nebulae, Star Birth, and Star Death
Chapter 27: Black Holes and Relativity
Chapter 28: Ultimate Address and the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
Chapter 29: Cosmology
Chapter 30: The Deep Universe
Chapter 31: Life from Outer Space
Chapter 32: (Some of) The Most Influential Scientific Findings of All Time
Appendices
Appendix 1: Seven Skills to Learn in College
Appendix 2: The Value of Amateur Participation in Astronomy
Appendix 3: Professor Ringwald’s Short but Essential Space Reading List
Appendix 4: Movies Recommended for Space Enthusiasts
Appendix 5: Style Conventions Used in This Text
Appendix 6: Words that Reveal Provincial Thinking, Cosmic or Otherwise
Appendix 7: Bibliography
Appendix 8: For Photographers: Focal Length, f-ratio, and Time Exposures
Homework Assignments