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Astronomy Today: The Solar System, 9th edition

Published by Pearson (February 8, 2017) © 2018

  • Eric Chaisson Tufts University
  • Steve McMillan Drexel University

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For courses in introductory astronomy.

Connects introductory astronomy to a broad understanding of the universe

With Astronomy Today, authors Eric Chaisson and Steve McMillan communicate their excitement about astronomy, combining up-to-date science with insightful pedagogy. The text emphasizes visualization and focuses on the process of scientific discovery in order to teach students “how we know what we know.”

The 9th Edition reflects current research and discoveries in the field of astronomy including the Horizon mission on Pluto, the Mars Maven mission on Mars, and the discovery of a potentially habitable planet around Proxima Centauri.

Hallmark features of this title

Encourage conceptual understanding

  • The Big Picture explains how a chapter's content fits into an overall perspective on introductory astronomy and how the chapter is connected to a broad understanding of the universe.
  • Concept Checks critical-thinking questions prompt students to reflect on the material presented and test their mastery of key concepts.

Develop skill building

  • Process of Science Check questions prompt students to consider how astronomers use aspects of the process of science in their research.
  • Discovery boxes explore interesting supplementary topics, providing insight into how scientific knowledge evolves and emphasizing the process of science.

Art and visual aids

  • Compound art employs multiple-part images to capture all aspects of a complex subject.

New and updated features of this title

Encourage conceptual understanding

  • UPDATED: Science reflects current research and discoveries from the New Horizon mission on Pluto, the Mars Maven mission on Mars, to new discovery of a potentially habitable planet around Proxima Centauri.
  • Learning Outcomes have been tightened and are now more concise, measurable, and testable.
  • REVISED: End-of chapter material in all chapters is significantly revised with restructured discussion sections, Big Picture questions, new conceptual questions, and new collaborative and individual activities.

Develop skill building

  • Data Points feature alerts students to the mistakes that students statistically make most often, and why.

Art and visual aids

  • Annotated art employs a proven educational research tool by integrating written and visual information to enhance student understanding of photos and diagrams.
  • EXPANDED: Additional scale markers visually help students understand the difficult-to-comprehend scale of the universe.

Highlights of the DIGITAL UPDATE for Mastering Astronomy (available for Fall 2021 classes)

  Instructors, contact your sales rep to ensure you have the most recent version of the course.

  • EXPANDED: Study Tools in the Mastering Study Area offer a wealth of learning tools with answer-specific feedback to help students master tough topics.
  • NEW: Dynamic Study Modules, specific to Astronomy Today, are assignable modules that pose a series of question sets about a course topic with targeted feedback to help master key concepts. 

Features of Mastering Astronomy for the 9th Edition

  • Prelecture Reading Questions and Quizzes reinforce important astronomy concepts and ensure students read the textbook prior to lecture to keep them on track and engaged.
  • Self-Guided Tutorials and Interactive Figures provide a deep understanding of the toughest topics in astronomy. 
  • Interactive Prelecture videos, all written and most narrated by the authors, provide a subject overview with exposure to key concepts before class. 
  • Virtual Astronomy Labs are inquiry-based labs that use Interactive Figures and Stellarium to conduct night sky data collection.
  • Narrated Figure Visual Activities are assignable with narrated animations that expand on figures in the text with embedded pause-and-respond questions.

Features of Pearson eText for the 9th Edition; published 2021

  • Narrated Figure Visual Activities are assignable visual activities with narrated animations that expand on figures in the text with embedded pause-and-respond questions.

Astronomy Today, 9th Edition Full Volume contains Chapters 1-28 and is also available in the following split volume versions:

  • Volume 1: The Solar System, 9th Edition contains Chapters 1-16, 28
  • Volume 2: Stars and Galaxies, 9th Edition contains Chapters 1-5 and 16-28

I. ASTRONOMY AND THE UNIVERSE

  1. Charting the Heavens: The Foundations of Astronomy
  2. The Copernican Revolution: The Birth of Modern Science
  3. Radiation: Information from the Cosmos
  4. Spectroscopy: The Inner Workings of Atoms
  5. Telescopes: The Tools of Astronomy

II. OUR PLANETARY SYSTEM

  1. The Solar System: An Introduction to Comparative Planetology
  2. Earth: Our Home in Space
  3. The Moon and Mercury: Scorched and Battered Worlds
  4. Venus: Earth's Sister Planet
  5. Mars: A Near Miss for Life?
  6. Jupiter: Giant of the Solar System
  7. Saturn: Spectacular Rings and Mysterious Moons
  8. Uranus and Neptune: The Outer Worlds of the Solar System
  9. Solar System Debris: Keys to Our Origin
  10. The Formation of Planetary Systems: The Solar System and Beyond<

III. STARS AND STELLAR EVOLUTION

  1. The Sun: Our Parent Star
  2. The Stars: Giants, Dwarfs, and the Main Sequence
  3. The Interstellar Medium: Gas and Dust among the Stars
  4. Star Formation: A Traumatic Birth
  5. Stellar Evolution: The Life and Death of a Star
  6. Stellar Explosions: Novae, Supernovae, and the Formation of the Elements
  7. Neutron Stars and Black Holes: Strange States of Matter

IV. GALAXIES AND COSMOLOGY

  1. The Milky Way Galaxy: A Spiral in Space
  2. Galaxies: Building Blocks of the Universe
  3. Galaxies and Dark Matter: The Large-Scale Structure of the Cosmos
  4. Cosmology: The Big Bang and the Fate of the Universe
  5. The Early Universe: Toward the Beginning of Time
  6. Life in the Universe: Are We Alone?

Eric Chaisson holds a Doctorate in Astrophysics from Harvard University, where he spent 10 years on the faculty of Arts and Sciences. For more than two decades thereafter, he served on the senior science staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute and held various professorships at Johns Hopkins and Tufts universities. He is now back at Harvard, where he teaches and conducts research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Eric has written 12 books on astronomy and has published nearly 200 scientific papers in professional journals.

Steve McMillan holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University and a Doctorate in Astronomy from Harvard University. He held postdoctoral positions at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, where he continued his research in theoretical astrophysics, star clusters, and high-performance computing. Steve is currently Distinguished Professor of Physics at Drexel University and a frequent visiting researcher at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study and Leiden University. He has published more than 100 articles and scientific papers in professional journals.

Emily L. Rice, College of Staten Island, City University of New York

Emily holds bachelor’s degrees in physics and astronomy and German from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree and doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics from UCLA. After completing her Ph.D. she held a postdoctoral position at the American Museum of Natural History, where she is still a resident research associate. Emily is currently Assistant Professor at the College of Staten Island and doctoral faculty in physics at the Graduate Center, both part of the City University of New York. In addition to her research on low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets as co-PI of the Brown Dwarfs in New York City (BDNYC) group, she is the co-author of Astronomy Labs: A Concept Oriented Approach and co-founder of the astronomy fashion blog STARtorialist.

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