Saturday, 22 August 2009

Reference material - Astronomy Meta

The following books are ones I've found useful over the years. I should note that many of these books I've used for my classes, and so they contain various levels of mathematics (proofs, etc..). I'll try to give a rating (1=not super rigorous, 2=fairly rigorous, and 3=most rigorous) as to how rigorous they are mathematically speaking.



For Astrophysics:



1) Astrophysics in a Nutshell -> 2, but not too many pictures



2) An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics -> 2, has some pictures intermingled, but not what you're describing.



For Cosmology:



1) Introduction to Cosmology -> 2, has some good pictures in it, but interspersed.



2) Principles of Physical Cosmology -> 3, not too many.



3) Cosmological Physics -> 3, not too many.



For Observational Astronomy:



1) An Introduction to Astronomical Photometry Using CCDs -> 1 (This is a free pdf, actually), not really great in the way of pictures (they're largely hand drawn or scanned in).



2) Observational Astronomy -> 2, some pictures, but not many are full page, and not in color.



For Galactic Dynamics:



1) Galactic Dynamics -> 2/3, this is the one which has a nice little full page picture section. The only problem is that it's a bit advanced and is really only about galactic astrophysics, not really about much else in astronomy/astrophysics.




Books that have amazing full page photos of astrophysical objects are:



1) Far Out, by Michael Benson



2) Space Places by Roger Ressmeyer



3) Hubble - National Geographic




I apologize that this does not really answer the question. I'm unaware of a book that has both mathematical rigor and full page, high quality images of the things it talks about. I think it would be an amazing idea to come up with one though!

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