Contents

 
• Introduction
• Basic Principles
  • The Copernican Revolution
  • Beauty and Simplicity
• Studying the History of Astronomy
  • The cast of characters
    • Aristotle
    • Galileo Gallilei
    • Nicolaus Copernicus
    • Tycho Brahe
    • Johannes Kepler
    • Isaac Newton
  • Leaving the Earth
  • The Earth in Motion
• Mathematical Preliminaries
  • Cartesian Coordinate System
  • Derivatives of a function
  • Integration of a function
  • Vectors
  • Kinematics
• Newtonian Dynamics
  • Newton's laws
  • Gravitation
• Light and Atoms
  • Pre-History
  • The Indivisible Atom
  • The Atom divided
  • Quantum Mechanics
    • Light Quanta
    • The Bohr Atom
  • The Astronomical Spectra
• Observations of Stars - I
  • Brightness and Distance
    • Brightness
    • Distance
  • Luminosity Functions
• Observations of Stars - II
  • Stellar Spectra
  • Luminosity Classification
  • The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
  • Binary stars and stellar masses
  • Radii of stars and their density
• Understanding what we observe
  • Birth of a Star
  • From Youth to Middle Age
  • Old Age and death
  • The HR Diagram and Clusters
• Our Galaxy - The Milky Way
  • The size of the Milky Way
  • The mass of the Milky Way
  • Interstellar medium
    • Interstellar dust
    • Interstellar gas
    • Neutral hydrogen
  • The structure of the Galaxy
• Other Galaxies in the Universe
  • Types of Galaxies
  • The Scenarios for the Galaxy Formation
    • The Site Model
    • The Merger Model
  • Distance to Galaxies
  • Masses of galaxies
  • Active Galactic Nuclei
  • Clustering of Galaxies
• The birth of Stars and the Solar System
  • Gas in the Galaxy
  • The birth of a star
    • Disks around stars
    • Binary Stars
  • Origins of the Solar System
• How do Stars shine?
  • Nuclear Physics
  • Generation of Energy in Stars
    • Hydrogen burning
    • Heavier fuel burning
    • Reprocessing of the rays
    • Solar Neutrinos
• The Death of Stars
  • Periodic variables
  • The Deaths of stars
    • Deaths of Light Stars: White Dwarf stars
    • The Mass Limit
    • White Dwarf stars in Binary Systems
      • Slow Accretion
      • Fast Accretion
    • Deaths of Heavy Stars: Neutron Stars
    • Black Holes
• Galactic Evolution and Dynamics
  • The Dynamics of Galaxies
  • Chemical Evolution
• Einstein's Theory of Gravity
  • Special Theory of Relativity
  • Gravitation
• The Physics of the Universe
  • Cosmography: The kinematics of the Universe
    • Redshift in the Universe
    • The Cosmic Distance Ladder
  • The Hot Big Bang
  • Thermal History of the Universe
  • Confrontation with Observations
  • The Density of the Universe
• The Formation of Structure in the Universe
  • The Initial Conditions
  • Astrophysical complications
  • The Horizon Problem and Inflation
  • The Catwalk
• About this document ...