The Cosmos : Astronomy in the New Millennium
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Jay Pasachoff and Alex Filippenko combine extensive research experience (including years of research in such areas as radio astronomy, solar eclipses, supernovae, active galaxies, black holes, and cosmology), teaching experience, and textbook-writing experience to offer a book that is unparalleled in its ability to present the latest science in a way that students can understand. This brief and beautifully illustrated text?one of the briefest available for the course?offers concise coverage of a wide range of astronomical topics. An early discussion of the scientific method stresses its importance in the verification of observations. The authors emphasize the study of origins in this text, first by singling out specifics in the headings of each chapter and then by dealing with a variety of relevant material in the text itself. This new edition includes a new chapter on the dozens of exoplanets that are being discovered around other stars. Automatically packaged with TheSky? CD-ROM and four months' free access to InfoTrac College Edition, the new edition extends student learning opportunities beyond the walls of the classroom.
About the Author
Jay M. Pasachoff is Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College, where he teaches the astronomy survey course and works with undergraduate students. He is also Director of the Hopkins Observatory there. Pasachoff has observed 35 solar eclipses and is Chair of the Working Group on Solar Eclipses of the International Astronomical Union. He is part of a group of scientists observing the atmosphere of Pluto through stellar occultations. He also works in radio astronomy, concentrating on cosmic deuterium and its consequences for cosmology. Further, he collaborates with an art historian on images of comets, the Moon, and eclipses. Pasachoff is U.S. National Liaison to the Commission on Astronomical Education and Development of the International Astronomical Union and is also Vice-President of the Commission. He has twice been Chair of the Astronomy Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he has been on the astronomy education committees of the American Astronomical Society, the American Physical Society, and the American Association of Physics Teachers. He is on the Council of Advisors of the Astronomy Education Review, the on-line journal sponsored by the American Astronomical Society and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. In addition to his college astronomy texts, Pasachoff has written the PETERSON FIELD GUIDE TO THE STARS AND PLANETS, and is author or co-author of textbooks in calculus and in physics as well as several junior-high-school textbooks. Pasachoff received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard and was at Caltech before going to Williams College. His sabbaticals and other leaves have been taken at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, the Institut d'Astrophysique in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Pasachoff has been awarded the 2003 Education Prize of the American Astronomical Society. Alex Filippenko is a Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, having joined the faculty in 1986. He received his bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1979), and his doctorate in Astronomy from the California Institute of Technology (1984). An observational astronomer who makes frequent use of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck 10-meter telescopes, Filippenko has also developed a completely robotic telescope that obtains data while he sleeps. His primary areas of research are supernovae (exploding stars), active galaxies, black holes, and cosmology. He and his collaborators recognized a new class of exploding star, obtained some of the best evidence for the existence of small black holes in our Milky Way Galaxy, and found that other galaxies commonly show vigorous activity in their centers that suggests the presence of super massive black holes. He also made major contributions to the discovery that the expansion rate of the Universe is speeding up with time, driven by a mysterious form of dark energy--the top "Science Breakthrough of 1998," according to the editors of Science magazine. Filippenko's research accomplishments have been recognized with several major awards, including the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1992) and the Robert M. Petrie Prize of the Canadian Astronomical Society (1997). A Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, he has also been a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow (2001) and a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar (2002). In 1991 he won the two most coveted teaching awards at Berkeley. He frequently gives public lectures on astronomy, and he has played a prominent role in science newscasts and television documentaries such as "Mysteries of Deep Space," "Stephen Hawking's Universe," and "Runaway Universe."
The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium,Jay M. Pasachoff,Alex Filippenko,Brooks Cole,053439549X,Astronomy,Astronomy - General,Science,Science/Mathematics,Science / Astronomy
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