Posted on Friday, May 12, 2017
Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology by Peter Schneider
Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology is a textbook about what and how we know or hypothesise about the Universe and our Galaxy.
The book starts out with a short overview of all the strange and wonderful astronomical objects and cosmological ideas that we face in modern science.
I enjoyed most the depth and abundance of details provided in the book.
As is quite usual in physics where at one moment you're dealing with passages of a rather descriptive nature and before you know it, you'll be in the middle of equations searching for your Greek alphabet. The structure of the book follows a rather steep learning curve. That however is necessary to get to the core of it and get to the modern observations, experiments etc that have provided the data about our Universe.
If in a more basic astronomy course you might be shown an image of CMB as seen by Planck and a short explanation of what it the features on it signify, then Schneider's book goes into great detail talking about deviations from what was expected etc.
The book doesn't start with the basics of astronomy or cosmology, and a certain level of comfort with higher maths is expected, but some necessary topics that you really need to understand before tackling the more advanced topics in cosmology are provided in the appendices.
It is however in essence still an introduction to extragalactic astronomy and cosmology, so you can read about different cosmological models, objects such as active galactic nuclei, galaxy cluster and groups, the cosmic microwave background, how much we know about the cosmological parameters and the Universe at an earlier time and evolution of galaxies.
Quite densely packed with theory but ultimately rewarding.
Labels: book review