C. R. Kitchin – författare

Exoplanets: Finding, Exploring, and Understanding Alien Worlds probes the basis for possible answers to the fundamentals questions asked about these planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. This book examines what such planets might be like, where they are, and how we find them.

Until around ten years ago, the only planets that we knew about were within the Solar System. The first genuine planet beyond the confines of the Solar System was discovered only 1988. Since then another 350 or so exoplanets have been detected by various methods, and most of these haven been found in the last ten years. Although many more exoplanets discoveries may be expected to occur even as this book is being read, a large enough data set is now available to form the basis for an informed general account of exoplanets.

The topic hence is an extremely "hot" one - all the more so because the recently launched Kepler spacecraft should soon start uncovering many more exoplanets, some perhaps comparable with the Earth (and therefore possibly alternative homes for mankind, if we could ever reach them). Exoplanets: Finding, Exploring, and Understanding Alien Life gives a comprehensive, balances, and above all accurate account of exoplanets.

Astronomers'' Universe Series is a new series, aimed at the same people as the Practical Astronomy Series - in general, active amateur astronomers. However, it is also appropriate to a wider audience of astronomically-informed readers. The aim of this book is to provide an up-to-date account of active galaxies that is appropriate to the background knowledge of amateur astronomers, but might also be picked-up and read for interest by any reader with a scientific bent. Active galaxies (including Quasars, QSOs, Radio galaxies, BL Lacs, Blazars, LINERS, ULIRGS, Seyfert galaxies, Starburst galaxies, N galaxies, etc.) are a major field of current astronomical research. Up to a fifth of all research astronomers are working on active galaxies. Huge amounts of time on major telescopes are devoted to their study. In almost all cases the galaxies are thought to be powered by 100 million solar mass black holes at their centres. Some of the objects are bright enough to be seen in small telescopes, and an amateur astronomer with a 20 cm telescope and a CCD detector could obtain images of many more. Lists of such objects, and their visual and imaged appearance in commercially available telescopes are an important component of this book. This detailed but accessible work will be the only coherent and complete source of information for non-technical readers on an area of astronomy that fascinates many people and whose spectacular images from the Hubble space telescope, Gemini, VLT and other major telescopes frequently make the pages of the quality newspapers and occasionally appear on TV. It also has the potential to be chosen as a set text or background reading for university courses on the subject, although the writing style is such that it will appeal to all readers.

The birth of a completely new branch of observational astronomy is a rare and exciting occurrence. For a long time, our theories about gravitational waves—proposed by Albert Einstein and others more than a hundred years ago—could never be fully proven, since we lacked the proper technology to do it.

That all changed when, on September 14, 2015, instruments at the LIGO Observatory detected gravitational waves for the first time.

This book explores the nature of gravitational waves—what they are, where they come from, why they are so significant and why nobody could prove they existed before now. Written in plain language and interspersed with additional explanatory tutorials, it will appeal to lay readers, science enthusiasts, physical science students, amateur astronomers and to professional scientists and astronomers.