Astronomy Today

Charting the heavens - the foundation of astronomy; the Copernican revolution - the birth of modern science; radiation - information from the cosmos; spectroscopy - the inner workings of atoms; telescopes - the tools of astronomy; the solar system - an introduction to comparative planetology; the Earth - our home in space; the Moon and Mercury - scorched and battered worlds; Venus - Earth's sister planet; Mars - a near miss for life?; Jupiter - the giant of the sloar system; Saturn - spectacular rings and mysterious moons; Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto - the outer worlds of the solar system; solar system debris - keys to our origin; the formation of the solar system - the birth of our world; the Sun - our parent star; measuring the stars - giants, dwarfs and the main sequence; the interstellar medium - gas and dust between the stars; star formation - a traumatic birth; stellar evolution - from middle age to death; stellar explosions - novae, supernovae and the formation of the heavy elements; neutron stars and black holes - strange states of matter; the Milky Way galaxy - a grand design; normal galaxies - the large-scale structure of the universe; active galaxies and quasars - limits of the observable universe; cosmology - the big bang and the fate of the universe; the early universe - toward the beginning of time; life in the universe - are we alone?