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The Cosmic Perspective Media Update with MasteringAstronomy™, 5/E
Jeffrey O. Bennett, University of Colorado, Boulder
Megan Donahue, Michigan State University
Nicholas Schneider, University of Colorado, Boulder
Mark Voit, Michigan State University

ISBN-10: 0321551389
ISBN-13: 9780321551382

Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Copyright: 2009
Format: Paper Package; 864 pp
Estimated Availability: 12/19/2008

Suggested retail price: $125.40
This item is not yet available for purchase. See estimated availability date above.

Building on a long tradition of effective pedagogy and comprehensive presentation, The Cosmic Perspective Media Update, Fifth Edition includes Voyager: SkyGazer planetarium software, an updated Astronomy Media Workbook on CD-ROM at no extra charge, and an enhanced MasteringAstronomy™ online tutorial and assessment system. This edition’s expanded visual pedagogy features new Cosmic Context two-page illustrations that walk students through key processes and summarize the major concepts in each Part. Zoom-in figures also provide students with a sense of orientation, scale, and relation between images. In addition to its enhanced visuals, the text also features See It For Yourself boxes with practical hands-on activities for in-class use or self-study, and a new set of Process of Science end-of-chapter questions that challenge students to think through how we know what we know about astronomy. Renowned for its up-to-date, expert coverage and strong pedagogical support for student learning, the Media Update Fifth Edition retains and builds on all the features and supplements from previous editions that have helped to make it the most widely adopted astronomy textbook.

 

 Offered with The Cosmic Perspective Media Update, Fifth Edition is an unparalleled media package designed to help professors and students seamlessly incorporate media into lectures and independent study.  MasteringAstronomy™, the most sophisticated yet easy-to-use astronomy tutorial and assessment system ever built, provides a library of assignable tutorial problems, a powerful gradebook for instructors, and a robust self-study area that includes quizzes, Interactive Tutorials, new Interactive Figures and Photos™, RSS news feeds that provide up-to-date articles from major astronomy news sources, a content-plus eBook, with enhanced functionality, write-to capability, live links, and more. For additional instructor media resources, The Cosmic Lecture Launcher v5.0 CD-ROM set includes high resolution JPEGs of all images from the book, Interactive Figures and Photos based on figures in the text, PowerPoint® Lecture Outlines, and Clicker Quizzes based on the book and book-specific interactive media, plus a variety of additional instructor resources.


  • A consistent chapter structure focuses on key learning goals.
    • Motivational learning goals begin each chapter to focus students on the most important concepts.
    • Section headings correspond to a learning goal from the chapter opener. Each section is written to address one—and only one—learning goal, guiding students through each chapter with a focus on key concepts.
    • Visual summaries at the end of each chapter revisit learning goals with text and key figures to reinforce what students have learned.
  • An integrated media program called out with icons throughout the text directs students to the most widely-used library of purpose-built astronomy media, including Interactive Tutorials, Interactive Figures™, and Interactive Photos™ which focus on the concepts students struggle with most.
  • Annotated figures and photos help students better understand the key concepts presented in complex figures and graphs and build visual interpretation skills.
  • The process of science is integrated seamlessly throughout the text as a core theme, and is reinforced with new end-of-chapter questions.
  • A cosmic framework establishes a solid foundation of understanding by exploring the key themes of our place in the universe and how astronomers know what they know, and fleshes out these themes throughout the text. This approach motivates students to learn, and helps them develop a personal understanding of astronomy and a lasting appreciation of the process of science.
  • A comparative planetology approach is used to emphasis the processes and features that planets in our solar system have in common, rather than presenting a disconnected set of facts about each individual planet.
  • A Media Explorations page at the end of each chapter provides quick exercises and in-depth projects using the wealth of specially developed interactive media on MasteringAstronomy™ and tools available in the Voyager: SkyGazer planetarium software.

  • MasteringAstronomy™, the most sophisticated astronomy tutorial and assessment system ever built, has been further enhanced. It provides both instructor-assigned homework as well as a self-study area with all of the popular Interactive Tutorials, Interactive Figures and Photos™, quizzes and more. The enhanced Media Update site includes new tutorial problems on the process of science, an eBook, RSS news feeds that provide up-to-date articles from major astronomy news sources, and new Interactive Figures and Photos.
  • Voyager: SkyGazer v4.0, the latest edition of this purpose-built planetarium software, now comes packaged with the book.
  • The Astronomy Media Workbook, Sixth Edition, offered on CD at no extra charge with every new book, includes a wide selection of in-depth activities using resources from MasteringAstronomy and the Voyager: SkyGazer planetarium software. These thought-provoking projects are suitable for the lab or for homework assignments.
  • Enhanced visual pedagogy makes this already student-friendly text even more accessible through the use of carefully crafted annotations, Cosmic Context process and summary figures, stepped zoom-in figures, and multiwavelength images.
  • Cosmic Context Figures combine text and illustrations into accessible and coherent visual summaries that will help improve your students’ understanding of essential topics.
  • Expanded end-of-chapter problem sets include reading Review Questions, conceptual Does It Make Sense? questions, Quick Quizzes, Short Answer questions, Quantitative Problems, and brand new Process of Science questions which ask students to think more deeply about how we know what we know about astronomy today.
  • Thorough coverage of new discoveries includes the IAU dwarf planet debate and the status of Pluto and Eris, the accelerating universe/cosmological constant, the detection of new planets around other stars, the potential of water flows on Mars, and the latest theories on the very early universe.
  • The Cosmic Lecture Launcher CD-ROM set includes high resolution JPEGs of all images from the book, Interactive Figures and Photos™ based on figures in the text, PowerPoint® Lecture Outlines, and Clicker Quizzes based on the book and book-specific interactive media, plus a variety of additional instructor resources.

I. DEVELOPING PERSPECTIVE

1. Our Place in the Universe

2. Discovering the Universe for Yourself 

3. The Science of Astronomy

S1. Celestial Timekeeping and Navigation

II. KEY CONCEPTS FOR ASTRONOMY

4. Making Sense of the Universe: Understanding Motion, Energy, and Gravity 

5. Light and Matter: Reading Messages from the Cosmos

6. Telescopes: Portals of Discovery 

III. LEARNING FROM OTHER WORLDS

7. Our Planetary System

8. Formation of the Solar System

9. Planetary Geology: Earth and the Other Terrestrial Worlds

10. Planetary Atmospheres: Earth and the Other Terrestrial Worlds

11. Jovian Planet Systems

12. Asteroids, Comets, and Dwarf Planets: Their Nature, Orbits, and Impacts

13. Other Planetary Systems: The New Science of Distant Worlds

IV. A DEEPER LOOK AT NATURE

S2. Space and Time

S3. Spacetime and Gravity

S4. Building Blocks of the Universe

V. STELLAR ALCHEMY

14. Our Star

15. Surveying the Stars

16. Star Birth

17. Star Stuff

18. The Bizarre Stellar Graveyard

VI. GALAXIES AND BEYOND 

19. Our Galaxy

20. Galaxies and the Foundation of Modern Cosmology

21. Galaxy Evolution

22. Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Universe

23. The Beginning of Time

VII. LIFE ON EARTH AND BEYOND 

24. Life in the Universe

    Building on a long tradition of effective pedagogy and comprehensive presentation, The Cosmic Perspective, Fifth Edition includes an enhanced art program. This student-friendly text is now even more accessible through robust visual pedagogy via new Cosmic Context two-page illustrations, which walk students through key processes and summarize the major points of each Part, and via updated zoom-in figures which provide students with a sense of orientation, scale, and relation between images. In addition to an enhanced art program, the text also features new See It For Yourself boxes with practical hands-on activities for in-class use or self-study, and a new subset of Process of Science end-of-chapter questions that challenge students to think through how we know what we know about astronomy. Renowned for its up-to-date, expert coverage and strong pedagogical support for student learning, the Fifth Edition retains and builds on all the features and supplements from previous editions that have helped to make it the #1 most adopted astronomy textbook.

     

     

    The Cosmic Perspective, Fifth Edition, includes the most sophisticated yet easy-to-use astronomy tutorial and assessment system ever built: MasteringAstronomyTM It provides both instructor-assigned homework and a self-study area containing our popular astronomy media that includes Interactive TutorialsTM, Interactive Figures and PhotosTM , quizzes, and more. The Cosmic Lecture Launcher v5.0 CD-ROM includes high resolution JPEGs of all images from the book for improved in-class projection, Interactive Figures and Photos based on figures in the text, PowerPoint® Lecture Outlines, and Clicker Quizzes based on the book and book-specific interactive media, plus a variety of additional instructor resources. This unparalleled media package is designed to help professors and students seamlessly incorporate media into their lectures and at-home study.

  • 0321505670The Cosmic Perspective, 5/E
    Bennett, Donahue, Schneider & Voit
    © 2008 | Addison-Wesley | Paper Package; 864 pages | Instock
    ISBN-10: 0321505670 | ISBN-13: 9780321505675
    Brief Description | Buy from myPearsonStore

Jeffrey Bennett

Jeffrey Bennett holds a B.A. (1981) in biophysics from the University of California, San Diego, and an M.S. and Ph.D.(1987) in astrophysics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has taught at every level from preschool through graduate school, including more than 50 college classes in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and education. He served 2 years as a visiting senior scientist at NASA headquarters, where he created NASA’s “IDEAS” program, started a program to fly teachers aboard NASA’s airborne bservatories (including the hopefully soon-to-be-flying SOFIA), and worked on numerous educational programs

for the Hubble Space Telescope and other space science missions. He also proposed the idea for and helped develop

both the Colorado Scale Model Solar System on the CU-Boulder campus and the VoyageScale Model Solar System on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (He is pictured here with the model Sun.) In addition to this astronomy textbook, he has written college-level textbooks in astrobiology, mathematics, and statistics; two books for the general public, On the Cosmic Horizon (Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2001) and Beyond UFOs (Princeton University Press, 2008); and an award-winning series of children’s books that includes Max Goes to the Moon, Max Goes toMars, Max Goes to Jupiter (coming soon), and Max’s Ice Age Adventure. When not working, he enjoys participating in masters swimming and in the daily adventures of life with his wife, Lisa; his children, Grant and Brooke; and his dog, Cosmo. His personal Website is www.jeffreybennett.com.

 

Megan Donahue

Megan Donahue is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University. Her current research is mainly on clusters of galaxies: their contents–dark matter, hot gas, galaxies, active galactic nuclei–and what they reveal about the contents of the universe and how galaxies form and evolve. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska and received a B.A. in physics from MIT, where she began her research career as an X-ray astronomer. She has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Colorado, for a thesis on theory and optical observations of intergalactic and intracluster gas. That thesis won the 1993 Trumpler Award from the Astronomical Society for the Pacific for an outstanding astrophysics doctoral dissertation in North America. She continued postdoctoral research in optical and X-ray observations as a Carnegie Fellow at Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, and later as an STScI Institute Fellow at Space Telescope. Megan was a staff astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute until 2003, when she joined the MSU faculty. Megan is married to Mark Voit, and they collaborate on many projects, including this textbook and the raising of their children,Michaela, Sebastian, and Angela. Between the births of Sebastian and Angela, Megan qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon. These days,Megan runs, orienteers, and plays piano and bass guitar whenever her children allow it.

 

Nicholas Schneider

Nicholas Schneider is an associate professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University

of Colorado and a researcher in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. He received his B.A. in physics and astronomy from Dartmouth College in 1979 and his Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1988. In 1991, he received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award. His research interests include planetary atmospheres and planetary astronomy, with a focus on the odd case of Jupiter’s moon Io. He enjoys teaching at all levels and is active in efforts to improve undergraduate astronomy education. Off the job, he enjoys exploring the outdoors with his family

and figuring out how things work.

 

Mark Voit

Mark Voit is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University. He earned his B.A. in astrophysical sciences at Princeton University and his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Colorado in 1990. He continued his studies at the California Institute of Technology, where he was a research fellow in theoretical astrophysics, and then moved on to Johns Hopkins University as a Hubble Fellow. Before going to Michigan State,Mark worked in the Office of Public Outreach

at the Space Telescope, where he developed museum exhibitions about the Hubble Space Telescope and was the scientist behind NASA’s HubbleSite. His research interests range from interstellar processes in our own galaxy to the clustering of galaxies in the early universe. He is married to coauthor Megan Donahue, and they try to play outdoors with their three children whenever possible, enjoying hiking, camping, running, and orienteering.Mark is also author of the popular book Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe.

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