Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction

The book immerses you into a medieval German city and the lives of a variety of its inhabitants. It's pretty gritty sometimes, but a good read, and a good look at what medieval times were really like.

I used this book as a reference when taking galactic astronomy courses. It was useful for answering my questions without being overly technical or assuming I had background information that I did not.

This is one of the clearest and best written undergraduate-level textbooks on galaxies, requiring a fair amount of mathematics and physics to fully appreciate the harder sections. However, things are very well explained in the clear prose, even if you don't want to grapple with the (not over-numerous) equations. Sparke and Gallagher are "good practical extragalactic astronomers" who distil for the reader much of the everyday knowledge used by the observational extragalactic astronomer, with a stronger focus on easier-to-appreciate observational results than on their complex and difficult derivations. This textbook sensibly begins with several chapters on the Milky Way galaxy, as our own Galaxy represents "baseline truth" in humankind's quest to understand the galaxies.This book is easy to read and very well structured. But it is at the university level; so the reader must have some prior algebra, and the ideal reader of this book should also be comfortable with graphs and physical argument.

The strong point is lots of problems to work out. But the emphasis is on classical galaxy studies to the near exclusion of cosmology, and the presentation is too verbose and scattered for my taste.

Galaxies in the Universe is an absolutely wonderful book. That being said, it is the type of textbook written so that the problems are an integral part of the text. That's not my personal preference because my schedule is such that I don't always have time to work them. The other problem with that style is that if you get stuck on any one problem, you run the risk of getting very little out of the rest of the book. Even so, most of the problems are very fun and not so difficult that someone who is strong in math and physics won't be able to get through them.It is very definitely an introductory text intended to get one started on the basics before going to a different book to tackle harder material. By the end of the book you'll have done things like calculate the amount of dark matter that must exist within a given galaxy. My favorite part of this book is the section on gravitational lensing and dark matter. A long time ago I tried to decipher the original Kaiser and Squires article on the topic, and never really succeeded. This book explained the material with wonderful clarity.The mathematical content of the book is relatively simple. Anyone familiar with multivariable calculus should be able to work through it without too much trouble. Some of the key results and ideas will be familiar to physics majors who've already taken a classical mechanics course or a thermostatistics course, but applied in a sufficiently different context that they don't seem redundant. This would be a good book for someone who has strong basics in general physics, is strong in undergraduate calculus, and has an interest in galactic astrophysics.

Fairly up to date and a good text. Many good example problems to test your knowledge during the chapters. Sometimes a little dry especially during derivations.

The book does not provide adequate equations to complete the homework problems. Many of the problems require much more information than the book provides. If this book is not required for a class, I do not recommend buying it.

I was interested in this book, but $2,013.80 for a hardcover? Really?