Eric Chaisson. Eric holds a doctorate in astrophysics from Harvard University, where he spent ten years on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. For five years, Eric was a Senior Scientist and Director of Educational Programs at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Johns Hopkins University. He then joined Tufts University, where he is now Professor of Physics, Professor of Education, and Director of the Wright Center for Innovative Science Education. He has written nine books on astronomy, which have received such literary awards as the Phi Beta Kappa Prize, two American Institute of Physics Awards, and Harvard's Smith-Weld Prize for Literary Merit. He has published more than 100 scientific papers in professional journals, and has also received Harvard's Bok Prize for original contributions to astrophysics.

Steve McMillan. Steve holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University and a doctorate in Astronomy from Harvard University. He held post-doctoral positions at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, where he continued his research in theoretical astrophysics, star clusters, and numerical modeling. Steve is currently Distinguished Professor of Physics at Drexel University and a frequent visiting researcher at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Tokyo. He has published more than 50 scientific papers in professional journals.

Reader Reviews
This textbook is an adequate basic astronomy text that covers all of the bases and as might be expected has many updates reflecting recent research in the field. However, much of the really cool photography, demonstrations, animations, and illustrations are not in the book but are supposed to be on the web-site to which purchasers are given free access for more than an academic year. Although the book was released months ago, the web-site will not be available before the end of May 2006. The Prentice Hall Product Support people took over three weeks to find this out and were unable to offer any other solution to the problem which was shared by half of my class section. Do not purchase this book; it is a ripoff. If you must buy it, buy an older edition that comes with the CD (which the rest of my section purchased.) You won't have to deal with Prentice-Hall. Even better, try "Discovering the Universe" which is better written and comes with a CD. Comments (3) | | (Report this)

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