Astronomy Notes 2019 Edition

The following updates/revisions/additions were made for the 2019 hardcopy edition [the website is continually updated]:

  1. In chapter 3: Added diagrams for phases of the moon and phases of inferior planets.
  2. In chapter 5: Added diagram for on what orbit period & speed depend and on what they do not depend.
  3. In chapter 6: Gravitational wave detectors discoveries.
  4. In chapter 7: Added "How do you do that?" box on figuring energies of photons for hops in an atom.
  5. In chapter 8: Correction to light-gathering diagram and updated material on large research telescopes. Website has additional section about buying your own telescope.
  6. In chapter 9: Updates to weather vs. climate section, magnetic fields, jovian moons, rings, and Mars.
  7. In chapter 10: Results from Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, New Horizons at Pluto, exoplanet discoveries (Kepler/K2 and TESS).
  8. In chapter 11: Tweaks to Inverse Square Law section.
  9. In chapter 12: Added 2017 solar eclipse picture.
  10. In chapter 13: Added material and diagrams in stellar nucleosynthesis section and LIGO/Virgo results about black holes.
  11. In chapter 14: Added clarifying language in Cepheids section and updated Milky Way central supermassive black hole section.
  12. In chapter 15: Updates about dark matter in galaxies, origins of galaxies, galaxy collisions & mergers, large scale structure (superclusters), supercomputer simulations of galaxy motions & evolution, imaging M87's supermassive black hole with the Event Horizon Telescope, and the "Steps to the Hubble Constant" section.
  13. In chapter 16: Updates about cosmic microwave background radiation from Planck mission, observations of first galaxies, dark matter, temperature power spectrum (also added graph from 2018 final Planck data release, BICEP2 discussion, dark energy, and tension with Hubble Constant measurements.
  14. In chapter 17: Updates about exoplanet discoveries (including Proxima Centauri b), habitable zones (including new figure about optimistic and conservative boundaries), life in liquid methane, biomarkers throughout a planet's history, Drake Equation with Kepler results, and fixed broken links to external websites.
  15. More margin notes to aid in quickly finding particular material and noting key points.

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