Galactic Astronomy

This is the definitive treatment of the phenomenology of galaxies--a clear and comprehensive volume that takes full account of the extraordinary recent advances in the field. The book supersedes the classic text Galactic Astronomy that James Binney wrote with Dimitri Mihalas, and complements Galactic Dynamics by Binney and Scott Tremaine. It will be invaluable to researchers and is accessible to any student who has a background in undergraduate physics. The book draws on observations both of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and of external galaxies. The two sources are complementary, since the former tends to be highly detailed but difficult to interpret, while the latter is typically poorer in quality but conceptually simpler to understand. Binney and Merrifield introduce all astronomical concepts necessary to understand the properties of galaxies, including coordinate systems, magnitudes and colors, the phenomenology of stars, the theory of stellar and chemical evolution, and the measurement of astronomical distances. The book's core covers the phenomenology of external galaxies, star clusters in the Milky Way, the interstellar media of external galaxies, gas in the Milky Way, the structure and kinematics of the stellar components of the Milky Way, and the kinematics of external galaxies. Throughout, the book emphasizes the observational basis for current understanding of galactic astronomy, with references to the original literature. Offering both new information and a comprehensive view of its subject, it will be an indispensable source for professionals, as well as for graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

Preface	p. 1
Galaxies: an overview
Introduction	p. 1
A brief history of galactic astronomy	p. 2
Photometric models of the Milky Way	p. 5
The nature of the spiral nebulae	p. 0
Kinematic models of the Milky Way	p. 15
Stellar populations	p. 20
More recent developments	p. 212 Astronom
Positions, motions and coordinate systems	p. 27
The equatorial system	p. 27
Galactic coordinates	p. 30
Parallax	p. 31
Proper motions	p. 34
Precession and nutation	p. 35
Astrometric systems	p. 37
Distances determined from velocities	p. 38
Radial velocities	p. 39
Distances from the movingcluster method	p. 40
Secular parallaxes	p. 42
Statistical parallaxes	p. 45
Magnitudes and colors	p. 46
Apparent magnitudes	p. 47
Colors	p. 52
Absolute magnitudes	p. 56
Absolute energy distributions
and bolometric magnitudes	p. 58
Mass-to-light ratios
Surface brightness and isophotal radii
Gravitational lensing	p. 62
Archival data and catalogs	p. 67
On-line resources	p. 71
Problems	p. 743 The Prop
The masses of stars	p. 76
The Mass of the Sun	p. 77
Masses of binary stars	p. 78
Visual binaries	p. 78
Spectroscopic binaries	p. 79
The radii of stars	p. 82
Phase interferometry	p. 82
Intensity interferometry	p. 83
Speckle interferometry	p. 83
Lunar occultations	p. 84
Eclipsing binaries	p. 84
Astrophysical estimates	p. 86
Classification of stars	p. 87
Novae	p. 87
Pulsars	p. 87
Classification of stellar spectra	p. 88
The MK system	p. 90
Physical interpretation of stellar spectra	p. 94
Color-magnitude diagrams	p. 102
Observed Cm-diagrams	p. 103
Luminosity and color as functions of spectral class	p. 104
The physical properties of stars on the MS and RGB	p. 109
The stellar luminosity function	p. 109
Malmquist bias	p. 111
Lutz-Kelker Bias	p. 115
The general luminosity function	p. 119
Cluster luminosity functions	p. 119
Photometrically complete surveys	p. 119
Proper-motion selected surveys	p. 20
The luminosity function of a given MK spectral class	p. 127
Catalogs of the nearby stars	p. 130
Interstellar dust	p. 131
Extinction and reddening	p. 133
Reddening-free indices	p. 138
Polarization of starlight by dust	p. 140
Extinction of sightlines out of the Galaxy	p. 140
Problems	p. 1434 Morphol
Morphological classification of galaxies	p. 146
The Hubble sequence	p. 149
Effects of environment	p. 157
The galaxy luminosity function	p. 162
The field galaxy luminosity function	p. 162
The cluster galaxy luminosity function	p. 165
The luminosity function divided by morphological type	p. 167
The Local Group	p. 169
Surface Photometry of Galaxies	p. 172
The night sky	p. 173
Effect of seeing	p. 176
Deprojecting galaxy images	p. 179
Photometry of Elliptical Galaxies	p. 85
Radial surface-brightness profiles of elliptical galaxies	p. 185
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