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Working physicists, especially astrophysicists, value `back-of-the-envelope' calculations ¿ short elegant computations or arguments that start from general principles and lead to interesting results. This book guides advanced undergraduates and lower graduates on how to understand astrophysics using general principles and concise calculations.
List of contents
- 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
About the author
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.
Summary
Working physicists, especially astrophysicists, value `back-of-the-envelope' calculations -- short elegant computations or arguments that start from general principles and lead to interesting results. This book guides advanced undergraduates and lower graduates on how to understand astrophysics using general principles and concise calculations.
Additional text
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.
