Publisher description

This volume contains the updated and expanded lecture notes of the 37th Saas-Fee Advanced Course organised by the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy. It offers the most comprehensive and up to date review of one of the hottest research topics in astrophysics - how our Milky Way galaxy formed. Joss Bland-Hawthorn & Ken Freeman lectured on Near Field Cosmology - The Origin of the Galaxy and the Local Group. Francesca Matteucci’s chapter is on Chemical evolution of the Milky Way and its Satellites. As designed by the SSAA, books in this series – and this one too – are targeted at graduate and PhD students and young researchers in astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. Lecturers and researchers entering the field will also benefit from the book.

This timely book presents an overview of the galaxies within the Local Volume, including the Local Group and our closest neighbours, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. Presented here are the latest results from radio, infrared and optical surveys as well as detailed multi-wavelength studies of individual galaxies. The book aims to provide a vibrant forum for presentations and discussions across a broad range of astrophysical topics.

Issues in Astronomy and Astrophysics / 2012 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ eBook that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Planetary Science. The editors have built Issues in Astronomy and Astrophysics: 2012 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Planetary Science in this eBook to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Astronomy and Astrophysics: 2012 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

Throughout his career Sir Robert Wilson has demonstrated that advances in a wide variety of fields in astrophysics and laboratory physics are achievable through the application of fundamental plasma spectroscopy. His work has included: optical studies that probed the nature of interstellar dust and first revealed the existence of O star winds; vacuum ultraviolet and X-ray diagnosis of fusion plasmas; rocket ultraviolet and X-ray observations of the Sun; and the conception, development and use of the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite which has contributed greatly to stellar, interstellar and extragalactic astrophysics. This volume contains reviews honouring Sir Robert and reflecting his interests.

Presents observational and theoretical papers from world experts addressing the important role in astrophysics of massive stars.

Planetary nebulae represent the brief transition between Asymptotic Giant Branch stars and White Dwarfs. As multi-wavelength laboratories they have played a key role in developing our understanding of atomic, molecular, dust and plasma processes in astrophysical environments. The means by which their wonderfully diverse morphologies are obtained is currently the subject of intense research, including hydrodynamical shaping mechanisms and the role of binarity, stellar magnetic fields and rotation. Their contribution to the chemical enrichment of galaxies is another very active research area, as is the ever growing use of their narrow high luminosity emission lines to probe the dynamics and mass distributions of galaxies and the intergalactic media of clusters of galaxies. IAU S234 summarises the current status of research on the properties and processes of planetary nebulae, as reported in reviews and papers by leading experts working in the field.