This book describes in nontechnical language one of the success stories of modern (twentieth-century) astronomy. It presents us with the physical picture of what constitutes a star, a description of how a star evolves with time, how its shape and brightness change, how it manufactures the chemical elements deep in its interior, what makes it explode... The presentation also includes exotic objects such as supernovae, pulsars, neutron stars and white dwarfs, and of course, black holes. This revised edition brings the discussion up to date with the inclusion of astronomical events like...

This book describes the subject of electrodynamics at classical as well as quantum level, developed as an interaction at a distance. Thus it has electric charges interacting with one another directly and not through the medium of a field. In general such an interaction travels forward and backward in time symmetrically, thus apparently violating the principle of causality. It turns out, however, that in such a description the cosmological boundary conditions become very important. The theory therefore works only in a cosmology with the right boundary conditions; but when it does work it is...

The study of Comet Halley in 1986 was a tremendous success giving a big boost to cometary science. In March of that year, six spacecrafts passed through Comet Halley as close as 600 km from the nucleus and made the "in situ" measurements of various kinds. These space missions to Comet Halley and that of the ICE spacecraft to Comet Giacobini-Zinner combined with studies, both ground-based and above the atmosphere, have increased our knowledge of cometary science in a dramatic way. This new edition of "Physics of Comets" incorporates these new and exciting findings. The emphasis of the book is...

Modulation spectroscoy of neutrons refers to a measuring principle, characterized by classification of neutron histories in a probabilistic way, not the usual deterministic way. In order to accomplish this, neutron beams entering the sample are modulated by hightransmission, white beam selectors of the multislit type, such as Fourier or statistical choppers of highfrequency modulated spinflippers. In this scheme it is impossible to decide in a unique way through which particular slit any single neutron passed, but the distribution of histories for a large population of neutrons can...

There are several textbooks available on solar astronomy which deal with advanced astrophysical aspects of solar physics, and books which provide very elementary knowledge about the Sun. This book will help to bridge the gap. It aims to stimulate interest in solar astronomy, presenting at one place the basic methods and techniques used in the field, together with the latest findings and the excitement in solar physics. As solar astronomy is becoming very popular among amateur astronomers and laymen, the book provides the practical knowledge to build simple solar telescopes and other equipment...

Find a hotter place! is the insightful story of the tortured path that led to our current understanding of how the elements in the Universe came to be. This is a story which began in Greek Antiquity, with the first musings on the nature of matter and the void, and continues today with ever more refined analyses involving virtually every aspect of 20th century physics, astronomy, cosmology and information technology. Identifying the source of stellar energy, probing the earliest instants of the Universe, and discovering of how and where each element was made are some of the outstanding success...