| DC Field | Value | Language |
|---|
| dc.contributor.author | Karttunen, Hannu | - |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-04-22T05:06:59Z | - |
| dc.date.available | 2021-04-22T05:06:59Z | - |
| dc.date.issued | 2017 | - |
| dc.identifier.isbn | 978-3-662-53045-0 | - |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/272 | - |
| dc.description | The main purpose of this book is to serve as a university textbook for a first
course in astronomy. However, we believe that the audience will also include
many serious amateurs, who often find the popular texts too trivial. The lack
of a good handbook for amateurs has become a problem lately, as more and
more people are buying personal computers and need exact, but comprehen-
sible, mathematical formalism for their programs. The reader of this book is
assumed to have only a standard high-school knowledge of mathematics and
physics (as they are taught in Finland); everything more advanced is usually
derived step by step from simple basic principles. The mathematical back-
ground needed includes plane trigonometry, basic differential and integral
calculus, and (only in the chapter dealing with celestial mechanics) some vec-
tor calculus. Some mathematical concepts the reader may not be familiar with
are briefly explained in the appendices or can be understood by studying the
numerous exercises and examples. However, most of the book can be read
with very little knowledge of mathematics, and even if the reader skips the
mathematically more involved sections, (s)he should get a good overview of
the field of astronomy. | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | As the title suggests, this book is about fundamental things that one might
expect to remain fairly the same. Yet astronomy has evolved enormously over
the last few years, and only a few chapters of this book have been left unmod-
ified.
Since the book is used also by many amateurs, the introductory chapter
has been extended to give a brief summary of different celestial objects to
“soften” the jump to rather technical topics.
The chapter on the solar system was very long. It has now been split into
two separate chapters. Chapter 7 deals with general properties of the solar
system. Individual objects are discussed in Chap. 8, which is more prone
to change when new data will accumulate. Also, new data on exoplanets is
obtained at an increasing rate. Therefore exoplanets are given a chapter of
their own; it is at the end of the book, since it is closely related to astrobiology,
already included in the previous edition. These last chapters may change more
than the rest of the book in the future. | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Springer | en_US |
| dc.subject | Astronomy | en_US |
| dc.subject | Fundamental Astronomy | en_US |
| dc.title | Fundamental Astronomy | en_US |
| dc.type | Book | en_US |
| Appears in Collections: | ARTS & SCIENCE
|
