Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology: An Introduction

Absolutely outstanding!! The amount of information is unbelievable. It's hard to imagine how Schneider was able to encompass such a large volume of material and explain the vast breadth of astronomy in such a clear, but precise and detailed manner.

Book quality was excellent and arrived within estimated time

Excellent text and reference for the study of galaxies and cosmology.

This book by Peter Schneider gives an impressively thorough description and analysis of the state of both current galactic research and its implications for modern cosmological theories. As such, this book is certainly not for the faint of heart! Brief overviews of the topics at the start of each chapter are followed by detailed mathematical analysis (upper undergraduate/graduate school level) of the latest data gathered from both ground based observations and satellite missions. This data is then compared with the latest and best theoretical explanations.Chapters include:1. Introduction and Overview- Types of galaxies, the Hubble expansion, types of telescopes, galactic surveys.2. The Milky Way as a Galaxy- Various methods for determining distance, Milky Way structures and kinematics, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.3. The World of Galaxies- Elliptical, Spiral and Irregular galaxies, composition, structure, luminosities, star populations, gravitational lensing.4. Cosmology I: Homogeneous Isotropic World Models- Basic observations, expansion of the universe, the Big Bang, thermal history, the Standard Model of cosmology.5. Active Galactic Nuclei- History and discovery, quasars, radio galaxies, black holes, spectroscopic analysis, Active Galactic Nuclei models.6. Clusters and Groups of Galaxies- The Local Group, cluster searches and dynamics, gravitational cluster lensing.7. Cosmology II: Inhomogeneities in the Universe- Gravitational instabilities, density fluctuations, structural evaluations, dark matter halos and lensing.8. Cosmology III: The Cosmological Parameters- Redshift galaxies, supernovae surveys, the cosmological constant, cosmic shear, the Cosmic Microwave Background, Dark Energy.9. The Universe at High Redshift- High redshift galaxies, deep views of the universe at different wavelengths, new types of galaxies.10. Galaxy Evolution- Formation of Disk and Elliptical galaxies and their dark matter halos, numerical simulations.11. Outlook- Future progress and challenges.One last personal observation: After the first couple chapters I found the end of chapter problems to be very hard (even with the solutions given). And, as I mentioned earlier, the advanced mathematical analysis lost me at times. But in spite of all this I learned a lot and highly recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in galactic astronomy and cosmology!

This is truly a remarkable book! As a person coming from mathematical statistics and interested in Astronomy, I found exactly what I was looking for in this book: a systematic treatment of up-to-date knowledge about extra galactic astronomy. The style is superb, book is almost self-contained with clear explanations and good problems. I think it provides solid background that would allow interested reader to go further into the more advanced sources with confidence.It deserves 5 starts....

The content in this book is pretty good. Shame you'll never get to read half of it, as the pages almost immediately start falling out and float away in the wind. Literally one day after the window to return the book closed, ~10 pages came out with more falling out shortly thereafter. I take good care of my books, I have a reference shelf full of them that have lasted for many years with no problems. There's no taking care of something though when it's designed to immediately disintegrate. It's a damn shame because this book is one I would have wanted to keep for a long time.

DO NOT BUY THE HARDCOVER VERSION. Fantastic book, but terrible, horrible, awful binding. It seems that the publisher made the hardcover version hoping that no one would open it or try to read it. A book this large cannot stay together with glue binding. I read it for literally one day and it completely fell apart. I had to go to a book bindery to rebind the pages, and now I love it.

This book is comprehensive but more like an encyclopedia. Introduction to Cosmology by Barbara Ryden is more understandable.