Astronomy For Dummies, 4th Edition

Your updated guide to exploring the night sky

Do you know the difference between a red giant and a white dwarf? From asteroids to black holes, this easy-to-understand guide takes you on a grand tour of the universe. Featuring updated star maps, charts, and an insert with gorgeous full-color photographs, Astronomy For Dummies provides an easy-to-follow introduction to exploring the night sky. Plus, this new edition also comes with chapter quizzes online to help your understanding.

For as long as people have been walking the earth, those people have looked up into the night sky and wondered about the nature of the cosmos. Without the benefit of science to provide answers, they relied on myth and superstition to help them make sense of what they saw. Lucky for us, we live at a time when regular folks, equipped with nothing more than their naked eyes, can look up into the night sky and gain admittance to infinite wonders. If you know what to look for, you can make out planets, stars, galaxies, and even galactic clusters comprising hundreds of millions of stars and spanning millions of light-years.

Whether you’re an amateur astronomer, space enthusiast, or enrolled in a first year astronomy course, Astronomy For Dummies gives you a reason to look into the heavens.

• Includes updated schedules of coming eclipses of the Sun and Moon and a revised planetary appendix
• Covers recent discoveries in space, such as water on the Moon and Pluto’s demotion from “planet” status
• Collects new websites, lists of telescope motels, sky-watching guides, and suggestions for beginner’s telescopes and suppliers
• Provides free online access to chapter quizzes to help you understand the content

Ever wonder what’s out there in the big ol’ universe? This is the book for you!

Table of Contents

Part 1: Getting Started with Astronomy
Chapter 1: Seeing the Light: The Art and Science of Astronomy
Chapter 2: Join the Crowd: Skywatching Activities and Resources
Chapter 3: Terrific Tools for Observing the Skies
Chapter 4: Just Passing Through: Meteors, Comets, and Artificial Satellites

Part 2: Going Once Around the Solar System
Chapter 5: A Matched Pair: Earth and Its Moon
Chapter 6: Earth’s Near Neighbors: Mercury, Venus, and Mars
Chapter 7: Rock On: The Asteroid Belt and Near-Earth Objects
Chapter 8: Great Balls of Gas: Jupiter and Saturn
Chapter 9: Far Out! Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Beyond

Part 3: Meeting Old Sol and Other Stars
Chapter 10: The Sun: Star of Earth
Chapter 11: Taking a Trip to the Stars
Chapter 12: Galaxies: The Milky Way and Beyond
Chapter 13: Digging into Black Holes and Quasars

Part 4: Pondering the Remarkable Universe
Chapter 14: Is Anybody Out There? SETI and Planets of Other Suns
Chapter 15: Delving into Dark Matter and Antimatter
Chapter 16: The Big Bang and the Evolution of the Universe

Part 5: The Part of Tens
Chapter 17: Ten Strange Facts about Astronomy and Space
Chapter 18: Ten Common Errors about Astronomy and Space

Part 6: Appendixes
Appendix A: Star Maps
Appendix B: Glossary