Books & Courses

The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium

The fifth edition of The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium provides you with the fundamentals of astronomical knowledge that have been built up over decades, with an expanded discussion of the incredible advances that are now taking place in this fast-paced field, such as New Horizons’ flyby of Pluto, exoplanets, ‘dark matter’, and the direct detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Written in a clear and easily understandable style, this textbook has been thoroughly revised to include updated data and figures, new images from recent space missions and telescopes, the latest discoveries on supernovae, and new observations of the region around the four-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. A rich array of teaching and learning resources is available here. The website is regularly updated to include the latest discoveries and photographs in the field.

Understanding the Universe

This visually rich course is designed to provide a nontechnical description of modern astronomy, including the structure and evolution of planets, stars, galaxies, and the Universe as a whole. It includes almost all of the material in my first two astronomy courses for The Teaching Company, produced in 1998 and 2003, but with a large number of new images, diagrams, and animations. The discoveries reported in the 2003 course are integrated throughout these new lectures, and more recent findings (through mid-2006) are included, as well. Much has happened in astronomy during the past few years; we will discuss the most exciting and important advances.

Black Holes Explained

Imagine a region in space where the force of gravity is so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape. A region with physical conditions so extreme that they have not yet been reproduced in any terrestrial laboratory. A region so dense that an object as tiny as a walnut would have the same mass as our entire planet. This phenomenon—first formed in the equations of Einstein and popularized in the stories of science-fiction authors—is a black hole: one of the most exotic, mind-boggling, and profound subjects in astrophysics.

Skywatching: Seeing and Understanding Cosmic Wonders

Step outside at any time of day or night, look up, and you’re bound to see a world filled with limitless wonders: majestic rainbows, dramatic cloud formations, stirring sunsets, intricate constellations, captivating solar eclipses, and even the distant planets themselves. But these and other breathtaking natural phenomena are more than just pretty objects to be admired. Rather, they’re the result of fascinating atmospheric and astronomical processes that describe right in front of you important concepts in scientific fields.