An Introduction to Basic Astronomy Concepts (with Space Photos)

Also available in paperback (full-color ISBN 978-1478169383, black and white ISBN 978-1478169727).

This eBook provides a highly visual and colorful introduction to a variety of basic astronomy concepts:

1. Overview of the Solar System
2. Understanding the Lunar Phases
3. Understanding Solar and Lunar Eclipses
4. Understanding the Seasons
5. Evidence that the Earth is Round
6. Models of Our Solar System
7. Laws of Motion in Astronomy
8. Beyond Our Solar System

This eBook features numerous NASA space photos. (NASA did not participate in the writing or publication of this eBook.) Many diagrams, like the heliocentric and geocentric models or explaining the phases of the moon, were constructed by combining together NASA space photos instead of simply drawing circles.

The content is suitable for a general interest audience, as well as those who may be learning astronomy and are looking for some supplemental instruction that is highly visual and focused on a variety of fundamental concepts.

There are about 17,000 words in this eBook and over 100 color images. (The paperback edition of this eBook has 186 pages.)

Tips: A few of the photos can look much larger if you simply rotate your eReader 90 degrees, switching between portrait and landscape mode. (Some popular eReaders also allow you to zoom in on an individual picture, though the zoom option is not always easy to find.) Remember that you can change the font size on your eReader to make the text larger or smaller (but, unfortunately, this may not affect the size of the equations, but, fortunately, there are only a few equations in this eBook).

The author, Chris McMullen, is a physics and astronomy instructor at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at Oklahoma State University in phenomenological high-energy physics (particle physics). His doctoral dissertation was on the collider phenomenology of superstring-inspired large extra dimensions, a field in which he has coauthored several papers.