Textbook Reviews
This page is intended to serve as a repository of textbook reviews for college-level astronomy courses, or physics/computing courses taught by astronomers. It could include links to supplementary material developed for courses using those books (activities, exams, etc.) that could be used by others.
Note that Astro 101 Resources are listed separately, here.
Author(s) | Title | Course Title/Level | Student Audience | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Carroll & Ostlie | An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics | Intro Astro for majors | Astronomy majors | aka "BOB" or the Big Orange Book, enough for 2+ semesters |
Dan Maoz | Astrophysics in a Nutshell | Intro Astro for (Physics?) majors | Physics majors | Solution manual available to faculy, PDF of first edition available online |
Mark Newman | Computational Physics | Computational Physics/Astrophysics | Physics/Engineering Majors with no assumed programming experience | Uses Python; First five chapters and sample code available online |
Marc Kutner | Astronomy: A Physical Perspective | Intermediate Astrophysics | Astronomy majors | |
Unsöld, Albrecht, Baschek, Bodo | The New Cosmos | Intermediate/Advanced Astrophysics | Astronomy majors | |
Arnab Rai Choudhuri | Astrophysics for Physicists | Advanced Astrophysics | Astronomy majors | |
Karttunen, Kröger, Oja, Poutanen, Donner | Fundamental Astronomy | Intermediate Astrophysics | Astronomy majors | |
Schneider | Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology | Galactic Astronomy/ Extragalactic Astronomy | Astronomy majors | |
Saha and Taylor | The Astronomers' Magic Envelope | Advanced Astrophysics | Astronomy majors | Really great for a variety of ideas and perspectives for teaching topics |
Ryden and Peterson | Foundations of Astrophysics | Advanced Astrophysics | Astronomy majors | |
Judith Irwin | Astrophysics: Decoding the Cosmos | Intermediate/Advanced Astrophysics | Astronomy majors |