What's New?
Content Updates and Additions
As stated, one of the goals of this text is to keep students up to date on current astronomical events and discoveries. In doing so, many new topics have been added to the fifth edition, and several topics from previous editions have been updated. Some of these include:
New Topics
• Sun daggers (Chapter 2)
• ALMA and SKA interferometric arrays (Chapter 6)
• Dwarf Planets (Chapter 7)
• Plans for future Moon missions (Chapter 9)
• Messenger spacecraft capabilities (Chapter 10)
• Radar detection of buried ice on Mars (Chapter 11)
• The reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet (Chapter 13)
• Two new satellites for Pluto (Chapter 13)
• Cassini investigation of icy moons of Saturn (Chapter 14)
• The Huygens landing on Titan (Chapter 14)
• Deep Impact projectile impact on Comet Tempel 1 (Chapter 15)
• The discovery of Eris, a dwarf planet larger than Pluto (Chapter 15)
• The Tunguska event in 1908 (Chapter 15)
• Dark matter in the "Bullet Cluster" (Chapter 25)
• Definition of life (Chapter 27)
• Extremophiles (Chapter 27)
• The Drake Equation (Chapter 27)
Updated and Revised Topics
• Temperature structure of the Earth’s atmosphere (Chapter 8)
• Information on future eclipses (Chapter 9)
• Discoveries by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars (Chapter 11)
• More icy bodies beyond Neptune (Chapter 15)
• Solar neutrinos and neutrino oscillations (chapter 15)
• Magnetars and gamma ray-ray flares (Chapter 20)
• The fraction of stars in the binary and multiple systems (Chapter 21)
• Membership of Local Group of Galaxies (Chapter 24 and Appendices)
• High redshift supernovae and the acceleration of expansion (Chapter 26)
• WMAP results (Chapter 26)
• Planets orbiting other stars (Chapter 27)
New and Updated Images
Including images from Hubble, Spitzer, Spirit, Opportunity, Cassini, Huygens, and Mars Global Surveyor.
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