Astrophysics for Physicists, Arnab Rai Choudhuri, Cambridge U. Press, New York, 2010. $60.00 (471 pp.). ISBN 978-0-521-81553-6
Essentially all branches of basic physics find applications in astrophysics. Therefore, the first major challenge for any author attempting to craft an astrophysics textbook is to lay out the basic physics before moving on to the subject at hand. Even an ideal undergraduate text, though, would serve only temporarily as a comprehensive text in a field that is evolving so rapidly. For example, the must-cover topic of general relativity, though now a classical subject, is seeing its applications expand at an increasing rate.
With Astrophysics for Physicists, Indian Institute of Science physics professor Arnab Rai Choudhuri introduces the topic at the advanced undergraduate level. The book is designed for a one-semester course covering stellar astrophysics and relativistic astrophysics with cosmology; those two topics are...
