What's the best Astronomy text for self teaching?

Lemaitre1
Wed, 27 Nov 2013 00:24:57 +0000

Although I went to medical school my undergraduate degree was in Astronomy. There are two books that I had as textbooks that I think would be good for independent study, particularly for people with good Physics backgrounds. One is “The Physical Universe” by Frank Shu which is by far one of the best written textbooks in any subject I have ever read. It is an old book written in the 1980s so it contains a lot of outdated information, particularly in the area of Cosmology. Still, it is a great book for learning the basics and is full of well designed problems that range in difficulty from high school Algebra to Graduate level Astrophysics. I do not understand why Dr. Shu never wrote updated editions of this classic.

Another one I used was “Fundamental Astronomy” by Karttunen et all, first edition was also in the 1980s but there was a 5th edition published in 2007 which is much more up to date than the Shu book. It contains many worked example problems and problem sets at the end of each chapter with answers in the back of the book.