Undergrad cosmology textbook

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Sarah Bridle
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Undergrad cosmology textbook

Post by Sarah Bridle » September 27 2004

I will lecture 16 lectures on cosmology to 3rd year physics & astronomy undergraduates and was thinking of working mainly from Malcolm Longair's Galaxy Formation book, with a few of the easiest problems from Padmanabhan's Cosmology and Astrophysics through Problems.
Is there another book that you would recommend even more strongly?
Anyone got any lecture notes lying around in electronic form(!)?

Roberto Trotta
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Post by Roberto Trotta » September 27 2004

i find Scott Dodelson's book "Modern cosmology", Academic Press (2003) excellent. It also has many ideas for exercises in it.

Alessandro Melchiorri
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Post by Alessandro Melchiorri » September 27 2004

Introduction to Cosmology by Barbara Ryden is excellent !
The book by Scott Dodelson is also very good but a bit too advanced for undergraduates.

Jochen Weller
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Cosmology Lectures

Post by Jochen Weller » September 27 2004

Hi Sarah

well I did not find any book to have the complete answer, so I used a combination of the lot.
It also depends if you need some GR intro or not.
What I was teaching last year was for part III math, so probably a bit to advanced for what
you need, but here is a link:
http://home.fnal.gov/~jweller/Teaching/physcos.html

(I had to exclude stuff like inflation and CMB because that was covered by other courses
on offer.)

Sarah Bridle
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Thanks

Post by Sarah Bridle » September 28 2004

Thanks very much!

Dimitra Atri
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Undergrad cosmology textbook

Post by Dimitra Atri » May 23 2005

By now, I am sure you would have prepared all your lectures, which means you have your lecture notes ready :)

Please provide me the link where I can download them. I am very new to Cosmology and am looking for materials from various sources.

Sarah Bridle
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Undergrad cosmology textbook

Post by Sarah Bridle » May 24 2005

Hi Dimitra,
Thanks for your interest.
In the end I followed Liddle's textbook (An Introduction to Modern Cosmology), which is relatively concise and at exactly the right level for the course I was doing. The students liked the book.
For next year I am considering switching to the Open University book edited by Jones and Lambourne. I think lots of the cosmology bits were contributed by Andy Taylor. (A large reason for considering switching is because next year I will have to teach both *galaxies* and cosmology and this textbook does both. I haven't studied the book properly yet but it looks good, also it has more worked examples and is v pretty, if expensive.)
Also lots of cosmology lecturers pointed out the nice book by Barbara Ryden.
My lecture notes can be reached from the 3C36 link on http://www.sarahbridle.net/lectures in case you would find them useful,
Sarah

Herve Dole
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Undergrad cosmology textbook

Post by Herve Dole » November 11 2007

Hello,

I also like this new book:
Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology. An introduction.
by Peter Schneider, 2006, Springer.

excellent. With updates including real and recent data.

Cheers

Herve

Boud Roukema
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Re: Undergrad cosmology textbook

Post by Boud Roukema » October 24 2008

Sarah Bridle wrote:Hi Dimitra,
Thanks for your interest.
In the end I followed Liddle's textbook (An Introduction to Modern Cosmology), which is relatively concise and at exactly the right level for the course I was doing.
Sarah
The polish version is out of print and out of stock now, unfortunately. Andrew! if you're reading this and want to get a new Polish edition translated and into print, that would be useful for at least a small handful of students each year in Torun, and maybe also a few other Polish cities. cheers, boud.

Andrew Liddle
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Re: Undergrad cosmology textbook

Post by Andrew Liddle » November 05 2008

Boud Roukema wrote:
The polish version is out of print and out of stock now, unfortunately. Andrew! if you're reading this and want to get a new Polish edition translated and into print, that would be useful for at least a small handful of students each year in Torun, and maybe also a few other Polish cities. cheers, boud.
Hi Boud, sorry to hear that the Polish version is out of print. Translations are not under my control -- basically it needs a local publisher to propose a translation to my publisher. 2009 will see an updated second edition in English, with various corrections/updates, and also a translation into German (presumably on the off-chance of there somewhere being a native German speaker who doesn't also speak perfect English). OK, shameless publicising over.

Andrew

Edward Thomson
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Re: Undergrad cosmology textbook

Post by Edward Thomson » November 19 2008

I've used the Dodelson book before but found it to be quite advanced, in my opinion it isn't so suitable for a first-time Cosmology course; however, it was useful for providing an alternative voice when I was doing a masters level project with Andy Taylor.
Dimitra Atri wrote:By now, I am sure you would have prepared all your lectures, which means you have your lecture notes ready :)

Please provide me the link where I can download them. I am very new to Cosmology and am looking for materials from various sources.
Andy Taylor has a copy of his undergraduate notes on the web:
http://www.roe.ac.uk/~ant/Teaching/Astr ... index.html

Plus there is an advanced course that looks at certain parts of cosmology in more detail:
http://www.roe.ac.uk/~jap/teaching/cos5.html

Both sets of notes originally (I believe) come from John Peacock, so they will look unsurprisingly like his book.

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