1: Orbits
2: Celestial Mechanics
3: Schwarzschild's spacetime
4: Interlude: Quantum ideal gases
5: Gravity versus pressure
6: Nuclear fusion in stars
7: The main sequence of stars
8: The expanding Universe
9: The cosmic microwave background
Prasenjit Saha is an astrophysicist working mainly on various
aspects of gravitational dynamics, including gravitational lenses.
He has also contributed to the literature on Bayesian inference,
intensity interferometers, and literate programming. He got hooked
on astrophysics from books like George Gamow's, and loves books
that present a subject in an interesting and slightly subversive
way. Paul A. Taylor completed his doctorate in the area of
stellar
astrophysics at the University of Oxford. He has subsequently been
a tutor, visiting researcher and lecturer in the African Institute
for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) network in Cameroon, Ghana,
Rwanda,
Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. He continues to teach
programming and signal processing within the AIMS network, and is
also a staff scientist in the Scientific and Statistical Computing
Core at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA.
This is a delightful small book... It will be a good resource for
lecturers, showing some nice examples of applications of the
physical principles, and of especial interest to advanced
undergraduates and postgraduates. The reader is encouraged to write
computer codes to find solutions, and the student with a thirst to
learn and the motivation to engage fully with the book will be
amply rewarded.
*Alan Heavens, The Observatory*
Astronomers like the concept of back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Such calculations help us get a handle on very complex problems
that would otherwise require far more time and effort to solve
properly. Prasenjit Saha and Paul A. Taylor build an introductory
guide to astronomy on exactly this premise.
*Nature Astronomy*
A sophisticated text that will bring physical intuition for
astronomy for mathematically able students. The computationally
based problems are a welcome addition to better empower student
learning.
*Brian Schmidt, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2011, Australian
National University*
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