Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition

Lectures:

1. A Grand Tour of the Cosmos
2. The Rainbow Connection
3. Sunrise, Sunset
4. Bright Objects in the Night Sky
5. Fainter Phenomena in the Night Sky
6. Our Sky through Binoculars and Telescopes
7. The Celestial Sphere
8. The Reason for the Seasons
9. Lunar Phases and Eerie Lunar Eclipses
10. Glorious Total Solar Eclipses
11. More Eclipse Tales
12. Early Studies of the Solar System
13. The Geocentric Universe
14. Galileo and the Copernican Revolution
15. Refinements to the Heliocentric Model
16. On the Shoulders of Giants
17. Surveying Space and Time
18. Scale Models of the Universe
19. Light—The Supreme Informant
20. The Wave-Particle Duality of Light
21. The Colors of Stars
22. The Fingerprints of Atoms
23. Modern Telescopes
24. A Better Set of Eyes
25. Our Sun, the Nearest Star
26. The Earth, Third Rock from the Sun
27. Our Moon, Earth's Nearest Neighbor
28. Mercury and Venus
29. Of Mars and Martians
30. Jupiter and Its Amazing Moons
31. Magnificent Saturn
32. Uranus and Neptune, the Small Giants
33. Pluto and Its Cousins
34. Asteroids and Dwarf Planets
35. Comets—Gorgeous Primordial Snowballs
36. Catastrophic Collisions
37. The Formation of Planetary Systems
38. The Quest for Other Planetary Systems
39. Extra-Solar Planets Galore!
40. Life Beyond the Earth
41. The Search for Extraterrestrials
42. Special Relativity and Interstellar Travel
43. Stars—Distant Suns
44. The Intrinsic Brightnesses of Stars
45. The Diverse Sizes of Stars
46. Binary Stars and Stellar Masses
47. Star Clusters, Ages, and Remote Distances
48. How Stars Shine—Nature's Nuclear Reactors
49. Solar Neutrinos—Probes of the Sun's Core
50. Brown Dwarfs and Free-Floating Planets
51. Our Sun's Brilliant Future
52. White Dwarfs and Nova Eruptions
53. Exploding Stars—Celestial Fireworks!
54. White Dwarf Supernovae—Stealing to Explode
55. Core-Collapse Supernovae—Gravity Wins
56. The Brightest Supernova in Nearly 400 Years
57. The Corpses of Massive Stars
58. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
59. Warping of Space and Time
60. Black Holes—Abandon Hope, Ye Who Enter
61. The Quest for Black Holes
62. Imagining the Journey to a Black Hole
63. Wormholes—Gateways to Other Universes?
64. Quantum Physics and Black-Hole Evaporation
65. Enigmatic Gamma-Ray Bursts
66. Birth Cries of Black Holes
67. Our Home—The Milky Way Galaxy
68. Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy
69. Other Galaxies—"Island Universes"
70. The Dark Side of Matter
71. Cosmology—The Really Big Picture
72. Expansion of the Universe and the Big Bang
73. Searching for Distant Galaxies
74. The Evolution of Galaxies
75. Active Galaxies and Quasars
76. Cosmic Powerhouses of the Distant Past
77. Supermassive Black Holes
78. Feeding the Monster
79. The Paradox of the Dark Night Sky
80. The Age of the Universe
81. When Geometry Is Destiny
82. The Mass Density of the Universe
83. Einstein's Biggest Blunder?
84. The Afterglow of the Big Bang
85. Ripples in the Cosmic Background Radiation
86. The Stuff of the Cosmos
87. Dark Energy—Quantum Fluctuations?
88. Dark Energy—Quintessence?
89. Grand Unification & Theories of Everything
90. Searching for Hidden Dimensions
91. The Shape, Size, and Fate of the Universe
92. In the Beginning
93. The Inflationary Universe
94. The Ultimate Free Lunch?
95. A Universe of Universes
96. Reflections on Life and the Cosmos