Introduction to Astronomy and Astrophysics

This textbook provides the basic theoretical and practical  knowledge of astronomy and astrophysics. It provides an overview from  classical astronomy and observational methods to solar physics and  astrophysics of stars and galaxies. It concludes with chapters on  cosmology, astrobiology, and mathematical and numerical methods.  Numerous color illustrations, examples of calculations, and exercises  with solutions make this work a useful companion to undergraduate  astronomy lectures.

The book is suitable for students  of physics and astronomy at teacher training level or in the Bachelor's  degree - but also people interested in natural sciences with  appropriate basic knowledge of mathematics and physics will find here an  appealing introduction to the subject.

This fourth  edition has been updated and revised with respect to the latest  developments in astronomy. The chapter on mathematical methods has been  redesigned and the software used is now exclusively Python.

From  thecontents: Spherical astronomy - History of astronomy - Celestial  mechanics - Astronomical instruments - Physics of the bodies of the  solar system - The Sun - State variables of the stars - Stellar  atmospheres - Stellar structure - Stellar evolution - Interstellar  matter - The Galaxy - Extragalactic systems - Cosmology - Astrobiology -  Mathematical methods.

This book is a translation of the original German 4th edition Einführung in Astronomie und Astrophysik by  Arnold Hanslmeier, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of  Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of  artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A  subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so  that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional  translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the  development of tools for the production of books and on the related  technologies to support the authors.