Books

Dust in the Galactic Environment (Third Edition)

D C B Whittet
Publication date: 2022, IOP

Dust in the Galactic Environment, Third Edition provides a thorough overview of the subject, covering general concepts, methods of investigation, important results and their significance, relevant literature, and some suggestions for promising avenues of future research. Major advances have been made in the last two decades in our understanding of astrophysical dust. These have been driven by discoveries arising from new observational facilities such as the Spitzer, Planck, and Herschel Space Telescopes, as well as important parallel developments in laboratory studies of cosmic and terrestrial analog materials. This new, expanded edition reviews these developments, summarizes the current state of the field, and considers possibilities for future advances, for example with the James Webb Space Telescope. It includes introductory material for new entrants to the field alongside detailed discussion for more advanced students and researchers.

Essential Astrophysics - Interstellar Medium to Stellar Remnants

Shantanu Basu & Pranav Sharma
Publication date: 2021, CRC Press

This book takes a reader on a tour of astronomical phenomena: from the vastness of the interstellar medium, to the formation and evolution of stars and planetary systems, through to white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, the final objects of the stellar graveyard. This highly accessible story of the observed contents of our Galaxy includes intuitive explanations, informative diagrams, and basic equations, as needed. It is an ideal guide for undergraduates with some physics and mathematics background who are studying astronomy and astrophysics. It is also accessible to interested laypeople, thanks to its limited equations.
Key features:
• Includes coverage of some of the latest exciting research from the field, including star formation, exoplanets, and black holes• Can be utilized as a stand-alone textbook for a one-term course or as a supplementary textbook for a more comprehensive course on astronomy and astrophysics• Authored by a team respected for research, education, and outreach

Interstellar and Intergalactic Medium

Barbara Ryden and Richard Pogge
Publication date: 2020, Cambridge University Press

This concise textbook, the first volume in the Ohio State Astrophysics Series, covers all aspects of the interstellar and intergalactic medium for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. This series aims to impart the essential knowledge on a topic that every astrophysics graduate student should know, without going into encyclopedic depth. This text includes a full discussion of the circumgalactic medium, which bridges the space between the interstellar and intergalactic gas, and the hot intracluster gas that fills clusters of galaxies. Its breadth of coverage is innovative, as most current textbooks treat the interstellar medium in isolation. The authors emphasise an order-of-magnitude understanding of the physical processes that heat and cool the low-density gas in the universe, as well as the processes of ionization, recombination, and molecule formation. Problems at the end of each chapter are supplemented by online projects, data sets and other resources.

Astrophysics of Planet Formation

Philip Armitage
Publication date: 2020, Cambridge University Press

Concise and self-contained, this textbook gives a graduate-level introduction to the physical processes that shape planetary systems, covering all stages of planet formation. Writing for readers with undergraduate backgrounds in physics, astronomy, and planetary science, Armitage begins with a description of the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks, moves on to the formation of planetesimals, rocky, and giant planets, and concludes by describing the gravitational and gas dynamical evolution of planetary systems. He provides a self-contained account of the modern theory of planet formation and, for more advanced readers, carefully selected references to the research literature, noting areas where research is ongoing. The second edition has been thoroughly revised to include observational results from NASA's Kepler mission, ALMA observations and the JUNO mission to Jupiter, new theoretical ideas including pebble accretion, and an up-to-date understanding in areas such as disk evolution and planet migration.

Molecular Astrophysics

A. G. G. M. Tielens
Publication date: 2021, Cambridge University Press

Focusing on the organic inventory of regions of star and planet formation in the interstellar medium of galaxies, this comprehensive overview of the molecular universe is an invaluable reference source for advanced undergraduates through to entry-level researchers. It includes an extensive discussion of microscopic physical and chemical processes in the universe; these play a role in the excitation, spectral characteristics, formation, and evolution of molecules in the gas phase and on grain surfaces. In addition, the latest developments in this area of molecular astrophysics provide a firm foundation for an in-depth understanding of the molecular phases of the interstellar medium. The physical and chemical properties of gaseous molecules, mixed molecular ices, and large polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules and fullerenes and their role in the interstellar medium are highlighted. For those with an interest in the molecular universe, this advanced textbook bridges the gap between molecular physics, astronomy, and physical chemistry.

Introduction to the Interstellar Medium

Williams, Jonathan P.
Publication date: March 2021, Cambridge University Press

This comprehensive yet accessible textbook provides a self-contained one-semester course for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It is written in a style that students can follow by themselves and allows instructors to use class time to go deeper into the details or show applications to current research. Most figures were created using publicly available data with accompanying Python scripts available at interstellarmedium.github.io, so that students can learn to analyze real data and create figures for their own research.