About the Book
Based on the most up-to-date astronomical research, The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Fifth Edition retains all of the features that have made this text so popular with new features helping students learn about the process of science and how to interpret visual data. The textbook package also includes updated supplements to support the book’s pedagogy, making it the most effective text in the one-semester astronomy market.
The Fifth Edition focuses on building student appreciation of science by helping them understand how astronomers know what they know about the universe, and how information can be gleaned from looking at and interpreting images. To support these goals, the book features new See It For Yourself boxes, Process of Science end-of-chapter questions, Check Your Skills activities which help students learn how to read figures and photos, and five new Cosmic Context two-page figures on key topics throughout the text.
Offered with The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Fifth Edition is an unparalleled media package designed to help professors and students seamlessly incorporate media into lectures and at-home study. MasteringAstronomy™, the most easy-to-use, yet sophisticated astronomy tutorial and assessment system ever built, provides both instructor-assigned homework and a self-study area with quizzes, Interactive Tutorials™, updated Interactive Figures and Photos™, a brand new eBook, RSS news feeds that provide up-to-date articles from major astronomy news sources, and more. For additional instructor media,The Essential Cosmic Lecture Launcher DVD-ROM includes high resolution JPEGs of all images in the text, Interactive Figures and Photos based on figures from the book, PowerPoint® Lecture Outlines, and Clicker Quizzes based on the book and book-specific interactive media, plus a variety of additional instructor resources. The Astronomy Media Workbook, Sixth Edition, provided on CD and at no extra cost,is now updated to correlate with the latest interactive media on MasteringAstronomy and Voyager: SkyGazer v4.0 planetarium software.
Package Includes:
MasteringAstronomy with E-book Student Access Kit
Voyager: SkyGazer v4.0 College Edition CD-ROM
Table of Contents:
I. DEVELOPING PERSPECTIVE
1. Our Place in the Universe
2. Discovering the Universe for Yourself
3. The Science of Astronomy
II. KEY CONCEPTS FOR ASTRONOMY
4. Making Sense of the Universe: Understanding Motion, Energy, and Gravity
5. Light: The Cosmic Messenger
III. LEARNING FROM OTHER WORLDS
6. Formation of Planetary Systems: Our Solar System and Beyond
7. Earth and the Terrestrial Worlds
8. Jovian Planet System
9. Asteroids, Comets, and Dwarf Planets: Their Nature, Orbits, and Impacts
IV. STARS
10. Our Star
11. Surveying the Stars
12. Star Stuff
13. The Bizarre Stellar Graveyard
V. GALAXIES AND BEYOND
14. Our Galaxy
15. Galaxies and the Foundation of Modern Cosmology
16. Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Universe
17. The Beginning of Time
VI. LIFE ON EARTH AND BEYOND
18. Life in the Universe
About the Author :
Jeffrey Bennett
Jeffrey Bennett holds a B.A. (1981) in biophysics from the University of California, San Diego, and an M.S. and Ph.D.(1987) in astrophysics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has taught at every level from preschool through graduate school, including more than 50 college classes in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and education. He served 2 years as a visiting senior scientist at NASA headquarters, where he created NASA’s “IDEAS” program, started a program to fly teachers aboard NASA’s airborne bservatories (including the hopefully soon-to-be-flying SOFIA), and worked on numerous educational programs
for the Hubble Space Telescope and other space science missions. He also proposed the idea for and helped develop
both the Colorado Scale Model Solar System on the CU-Boulder campus and the VoyageScale Model Solar System on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (He is pictured here with the model Sun.) In addition to this astronomy textbook, he has written college-level textbooks in astrobiology, mathematics, and statistics; two books for the general public, On the Cosmic Horizon (Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2001) and Beyond UFOs (Princeton University Press, 2008); and an award-winning series of children’s books that includes Max Goes to the Moon, Max Goes toMars, Max Goes to Jupiter (coming soon), and Max’s Ice Age Adventure. When not working, he enjoys participating in masters swimming and in the daily adventures of life with his wife, Lisa; his children, Grant and Brooke; and his dog, Cosmo. His personal Website is www.jeffreybennett.com.
Megan Donahue
Megan Donahue is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University. Her current research is mainly on clusters of galaxies: their contents—dark matter, hot gas, galaxies, active galactic nuclei—and what they reveal about the contents of the universe and how galaxies form and evolve. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska and received a B.A. in physics from MIT, where she began her research career as an X-ray astronomer. She has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Colorado, for a thesis on theory and optical observations of intergalactic and intracluster gas. That thesis won the 1993 Trumpler Award from the Astronomical Society for the Pacific for an outstanding astrophysics doctoral dissertation in North America. She continued postdoctoral research in optical and X-ray observations as a Carnegie Fellow at Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, and later as an STScI Institute Fellow at Space Telescope. Megan was a staff astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute until 2003, when she joined the MSU faculty. Megan is married to Mark Voit, and they collaborate on many projects, including this textbook and the raising of their children,Michaela, Sebastian, and Angela. Between the births of Sebastian and Angela, Megan qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon. These days,Megan runs, orienteers, and plays piano and bass guitar whenever her children allow it.
Nicholas Schneider
Nicholas Schneider is an associate professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University
of Colorado and a researcher in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. He received his B.A. in physics and astronomy from Dartmouth College in 1979 and his Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1988. In 1991, he received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award. His research interests include planetary atmospheres and planetary astronomy, with a focus on the odd case of Jupiter’s moon Io. He enjoys teaching at all levels and is active in efforts to improve undergraduate astronomy education. Off the job, he enjoys exploring the outdoors with his family
and figuring out how things work.
Mark Voit
Mark Voit is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University. He earned his B.A. in astrophysical sciences at Princeton University and his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Colorado in 1990. He continued his studies at the California Institute of Technology, where he was a research fellow in theoretical astrophysics, and then moved on to Johns Hopkins University as a Hubble Fellow. Before going to Michigan State,Mark worked in the Office of Public Outreach
at the Space Telescope, where he developed museum exhibitions about the Hubble Space Telescope and was the scientist behind NASA’s HubbleSite. His research interests range from interstellar processes in our own galaxy to the clustering of galaxies in the early universe. He is married to coauthor Megan Donahue, and they try to play outdoors with their three children whenever possible, enjoying hiking, camping, running, and orienteering.Mark is also author of the popular book Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe.
