The Cosmic Perspective is designed as a textbook for college course in introductory astornomy, but is suitable for anyone who is curious about the universe. We assume no prior knowledge of astronomy or physics, and the book is especially suited to students who do not intend to major in mathematics or science.
The Comics Perspective provides a comprehensive survey of modern astronomy, and it contains enoght material for a two-semester introductory astronomy sequence. It may also be used for one-semester survey courses if professors choose their areas of emphasis. However, instructors fo one-term courses may also wish to consider our two shorter versions of this book : The Essentail Cosmic Perspective, which covers a smaller set of topics and is tailored to meet the needs of comprehensive one-semester survey course in as tronomy, and The Cosmic Perspective Fundamentals, which covers only the most fundamental topics in astronomy, and The Cosmic Perspective Fundamentals, which covers only the most fundamental topics in astronomy and is designed for courses that address a more limited set of topics.
New to This Edition
The underlying philosophy, goals, and structure of The Cosmic Perspective remain the same as in past editions, but we have thoroughtly updated the text and made a number of other improvements. Here, briefly, is a list of the signuficant changes you'll find in the sixth edition:
- Fully Updated Science : Astronomy is a fast-moving field, and numerous new developments have occurred since the prior edition
was published. The topics updated in this edition include the following:
- New developments in the study of extrasolar planets and planetary systems, including early results from Kepler
- Discussion of the IAU decision to create a "dwarf Planet" category
- New results and images from spacecraft exploring our solar system, including Phoenix on Mars, Cassini at Saturn,
MESSENGER at Mercury, and more
- The latest observational evidence for dark matter and dark energy
- Recent result form the Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-Ray Observatory
- New Comic Context Two-Page Figures : We have added three new Cosmic Context fugures to the book, for a total of 18. These
figures use two pages of fully integrated text, art, and photos to outline key processes and summarize major concepts. You'll find
one of these figure at the end of each of the seven Parts of the book, and the rest appear within the main bodies of various
chapter.
- New Visual Overview of Scale: These fold-out diagrams give students an at-a-glance reference to review the scale of time and
space, a key challenge students face in astronomy.
- New Visual Skills Check Questions: Each chapter's end-of-chapter exercises concludes with a new set of questions designed to
help students build their visual interpretation skills so that they can better understand the many types of visual information used
in astronomy. Answers are given in the back of the book so that students can use them to review before exams.
- MasteringAstronomy www.masteringastronomy.com : We have reached the point where The Comic Perspective is no loger just a
textbook; rather, it is a "learning package" consisting of a printed text supported by deeply integrated, interactive media that we
have developed to support every chapter of our book. For students, MateringAstronomy provides the unprecedented ability to
quickly build, post, and automatically grade pre-and post-lecture diagnostic tests, weekly homework assignments, and exams of
appropriate difficulty, duration, and content coverage. It also provides the ability to record detailed information on the step-by-
step work of every student directly to a powerful and easy-to-use Gradebook, and evaluate results with a sophisticated suite for
this editon are the following:
- A set of new tutorial problems which focus on math reveiw and building quantitative skills for courses with quantitative
requirements
- A set of interactive tours which explore celestial objects using WorldWide Telescope (WWT)
- A set of Group Work Activities to foster active and collaborative learning in the classroom
- RSS feeds from a variety of notable astronomy publications
- A fully customizable myebook product with embedded links to multimedia and glossary terms
Part 1 : Developing Perspective
Part 2 : Key Concepts for Astronomy
Part 3 : Learning from Other Worlds
Part 4 : A Deeper Look at Nature
Part 5 : Stars
Part 6 : Galaxies and Beyond
Part 7 : Life on Earth and Beyond