Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition

Who has not gazed with wonder at the night sky, especially from a dark site far away from city lights? The great canopy of stars stretching overhead suggests that our world is part of a vastly larger cosmos. But how large is it? Where do we fit in? And how did it all begin? These questions have puzzled stargazers for thousands of years, and the search for answers helped spark the great advances of the scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. But only in our own time has the full picture of the true immensity, variety, and surpassing strangeness of the Universe come into focus.

Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition is a nontechnical description of where that picture stands today. In 96 richly illustrated half-hour lectures, you will survey the main concepts, methods, and discoveries in astronomy in-depth from the constellations drawn by the ancients, to the latest reports from planetary probes in the Solar System, to the most recent images offered by telescopes probing the farthest frontiers of space and time.

These lectures fully update Professor Alex Filippenko's 1998 edition of this course and his companion course from 2003. All of the material in this course is integrated so that one topic builds on another as you develop the conceptual tools that allow you to explore the Universe. For example, the study of the Solar System leads naturally to the investigation of planets around other stars and the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos. Likewise, rainbows and similar atmospheric phenomena introduce the subject of light, and light is the key to unraveling the mysteries of stars and galaxies.

Dr. Filippenko uses thousands of diagrams and photographs. There are almost 300 short movies and computer animations that make astronomical phenomena easier to understand, and they put planets, stars, and galaxies into context as you zoom through the cosmos. A showman in the classroom, Dr. Filippenko delights in simple, easily reproducible demonstrations that use tennis balls, apples, paper plates, and other objects to explain scientific concepts. Furthermore, he has a gift for analogies: at one point, he makes the energy content of one erg vivid by comparing it to one fly doing one push-up!

Altogether, this course is an unrivalled opportunity to experience a full-year introductory college course on astronomy, delivered by a five-time winner of "Best Professor" on campus at the University of California, Berkeley, who himself is a leading participant in some of the groundbreaking discoveries at the forefront of the field. Professor Filippenko is both a world-class teacher and researcher: In 2006 he was named one of four national Professors of the Year by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and in 1998 his international team of astronomers was credited with the top "science breakthrough of the year" for their amazing discovery that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up�a finding that is now shaking the foundations of physics.

The Universe Is more Exciting than Ever

Much has happened in astronomy in a few short years. Many of these new discoveries are scientifically sophisticated, but the comprehensive scope of this course allows you to absorb the background you will need to grasp exciting recent developments such as:

* Martian "blueberries": The Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars have found clues in tiny, blue spherical stones nicknamed "blueberries" that indicate liquid water was once abundant on the red planet.
* Water on Enceladus: The Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn has turned up evidence of liquid water just beneath the frozen surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Where there's water, there may be life.
* Is Pluto a planet? In August 2006, Pluto was demoted from the planetary status it had enjoyed since its discovery in 1930. Professor Filippenko discusses the persuasive reasons for this change�and his misgivings about how it was done.
* Exoplanets: Astronomers continue to find new planets orbiting other stars at a rate of about 20 per year. They are rapidly approaching the Holy Grail of planet hunters: extra-solar planets the size of Earth.
* Gamma-ray bursts: Thanks to NASA's Swift satellite, astronomers know more than ever about the most luminous and baffling events in the cosmos: gamma-ray bursts. They have found strong indications that many such bursts probably represent the birth cries of black holes.
* Dark energy: A mysterious force is causing the Universe to expand at an accelerating rate. The nature of this "dark energy" is now better understood thanks to recent observations that have narrowed down exactly when this speed-up began.
* Supermassive black holes: Once considered highly speculative, gigantic black holes are now known to be at the centers of most galaxies. These objects, from millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun, can produce vast jets of material moving outward at nearly the speed of light.

A Science for Everyone

As befits its subject matter, astronomy is perhaps the most diverse science there is. It teaches you about natural phenomena that we all experience, such as the seasons, rainbows, and phases of the Moon. It teaches you about tools of the trade, such as telescopes, spectrographs, and space probes. It teaches you about different areas of science, such as optics, physics, and chemistry. It also poses one of the most profound questions in the field of biology, namely, is there life elsewhere in the Universe?

Because astronomy has played a leading role in the development of science since antiquity, it is filled with key discoveries in the history of science, such as Copernicus's heliocentric model of the Solar System, Newton's universal law of gravitation, and Einstein's theory of relativity.

And, of course, astronomy serves as a field guide for understanding the night sky:

* The prominent star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion is a red supergiant, hundreds of times the diameter of the Sun.
* The brightest star in the sky, Sirius, is orbited by a stellar corpse called a white dwarf, which points to the ultimate fate of the Sun.
* The beautiful Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova, whose explosion was observed by Chinese astronomers on July 4, 1054, and that at its center is an immensely dense, rapidly spinning neutron star.

At Home in the Universe

There is no doubt that we live in a golden age of astronomy. At this moment, space probes are on their way to new destinations, innovative new telescopes are on the drawing board, experiments are underway to test bold ideas about the cosmos, and powerful new tools for probing the nature of matter are about to come online. Astronomers everywhere are watching the skies with instruments of every size and type, searching for clues that will extend our knowledge of the Universe.

Armed with the wide-ranging and unified view of astronomy that this course offers, you will truly appreciate these future findings as they are announced. Moreover, you will feel at home in our wondrous Universe in a deeply satisfying way.

Should I Buy Audio or Video?

Images are presented by the hundreds and are so integral to the course's content, we are offering it only on DVD.


Lectures:

1. A Grand Tour of the Cosmos
2. The Rainbow Connection
3. Sunrise, Sunset
4. Bright Objects in the Night Sky
5. Fainter Phenomena in the Night Sky
6. Our Sky through Binoculars and Telescopes
7. The Celestial Sphere
8. The Reason for the Seasons
9. Lunar Phases and Eerie Lunar Eclipses
10. Glorious Total Solar Eclipses
11. More Eclipse Tales
12. Early Studies of the Solar System
13. The Geocentric Universe
14. Galileo and the Copernican Revolution
15. Refinements to the Heliocentric Model
16. On the Shoulders of Giants
17. Surveying Space and Time
18. Scale Models of the Universe
19. Light—The Supreme Informant
20. The Wave-Particle Duality of Light
21. The Colors of Stars
22. The Fingerprints of Atoms
23. Modern Telescopes
24. A Better Set of Eyes
25. Our Sun, the Nearest Star
26. The Earth, Third Rock from the Sun
27. Our Moon, Earth's Nearest Neighbor
28. Mercury and Venus
29. Of Mars and Martians
30. Jupiter and Its Amazing Moons
31. Magnificent Saturn
32. Uranus and Neptune, the Small Giants
33. Pluto and Its Cousins
34. Asteroids and Dwarf Planets
35. Comets—Gorgeous Primordial Snowballs
36. Catastrophic Collisions
37. The Formation of Planetary Systems
38. The Quest for Other Planetary Systems
39. Extra-Solar Planets Galore!
40. Life Beyond the Earth
41. The Search for Extraterrestrials
42. Special Relativity and Interstellar Travel
43. Stars—Distant Suns
44. The Intrinsic Brightnesses of Stars
45. The Diverse Sizes of Stars
46. Binary Stars and Stellar Masses
47. Star Clusters, Ages, and Remote Distances
48. How Stars Shine—Nature's Nuclear Reactors
49. Solar Neutrinos—Probes of the Sun's Core
50. Brown Dwarfs and Free-Floating Planets
51. Our Sun's Brilliant Future
52. White Dwarfs and Nova Eruptions
53. Exploding Stars—Celestial Fireworks!
54. White Dwarf Supernovae—Stealing to Explode
55. Core-Collapse Supernovae—Gravity Wins
56. The Brightest Supernova in Nearly 400 Years
57. The Corpses of Massive Stars
58. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
59. Warping of Space and Time
60. Black Holes—Abandon Hope, Ye Who Enter
61. The Quest for Black Holes
62. Imagining the Journey to a Black Hole
63. Wormholes—Gateways to Other Universes?
64. Quantum Physics and Black-Hole Evaporation
65. Enigmatic Gamma-Ray Bursts
66. Birth Cries of Black Holes
67. Our Home—The Milky Way Galaxy
68. Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy
69. Other Galaxies—"Island Universes"
70. The Dark Side of Matter
71. Cosmology—The Really Big Picture
72. Expansion of the Universe and the Big Bang
73. Searching for Distant Galaxies
74. The Evolution of Galaxies
75. Active Galaxies and Quasars
76. Cosmic Powerhouses of the Distant Past
77. Supermassive Black Holes
78. Feeding the Monster
79. The Paradox of the Dark Night Sky
80. The Age of the Universe
81. When Geometry Is Destiny
82. The Mass Density of the Universe
83. Einstein's Biggest Blunder?
84. The Afterglow of the Big Bang
85. Ripples in the Cosmic Background Radiation
86. The Stuff of the Cosmos
87. Dark Energy—Quantum Fluctuations?
88. Dark Energy—Quintessence?
89. Grand Unification & Theories of Everything
90. Searching for Hidden Dimensions
91. The Shape, Size, and Fate of the Universe
92. In the Beginning
93. The Inflationary Universe
94. The Ultimate Free Lunch?
95. A Universe of Universes
96. Reflections on Life and the Cosmos

also You can find my other last: Astronomy-posts