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4.0 out of 5 stars
Stellar Evolution: A modern approach including Stellar Populations & Galaxies, October 2, 2010
This is an up-to-date treatment of stellar evolution, together with some of its applications to Milky Way & Extragalactic astronomy. This information-dense volume of modest size imparts detailed technical knowledge of how astronomers NOW think about the evolution of stars. In contrast, other books on the Theory of Stellar Evolution can be more old fashioned, making it harder for the reader to make the leap towards understanding the current scientific literature.
This reviewer isn't qualified to dispute contentious elements of the science herein presented, but I do know a lot about stars and galaxies, so I can assure you that this book is a clearly written and useful. Salaris and Cassisi are well-respected workers in the very specialized field of modeling Stellar Evolution & Stellar Populations, and this book provides a compact "super summary" of what they know!
As such, this book provides an easier path to obtaining specialist knowledge than reading vast numbers of jargon-filled papers in an over-specialized sub-field within the colossus of knowledge that is today's astronomy. This text is at the Upper Undergraduate to Graduate level, so I find that I'm brushing off some physics units that I did at University in order to understand it. To understand this book, you must be very used to mathematical/physical argument. And a really good background knowledge of astronomy is also helpful.
The book starts with a Heavily Mathematical treatment of the internal structure of stars. After this, the book gets more interesting, as the authors accurately & comprehensively describe how various stars occupying a large range of stellar masses are predicted to evolve in their various parameters:
that is, the changes (with time) in luminosity, temperature, radius, surface chemical composition, etc., that take place as a star evolves (the authors are active researchers, so the evolutionary histories given for various stars will be in accord with today's science). This book also explains the actions of many less well-known factors that strongly effect how various types of stars evolve: mass loss, varying chemical composition, stellar rotation, convection efficiency.
The chapters describing how stars evolve provide some relief from the heavily mathematical treatments in other parts of the book!! They describe the predicted time evolution of observables that we might actually see when we make observations with instruments attached to the telescope, instead of inundating us with theory.....the variation, with time, of stellar colors & temperatures & luminosities is explained using the easily understood graphical tool of the Hertzprung-Russell (alias, the Color-Magnitude) diagram.
This section is a beautiful & concise primer that comprehensively describes the paths that various stars take across the color-magnitude (temperature-magnitude) graph. Particular emphasis is given to describing the more exotic phases of stellar evolution: white dwarfs, Type Ia Supernovae, neutron stars, and the late stages in the evolution of massive stars.
The nuclear reactions taking place at various stages in a star's life are described in detail, though not with intent to explain nuclear physics. This material on nuclear reactions is detailed enough that the physically savvy reader can gain a real appreciation of what is going on inside stars, leaving her/him to look up the theory elsewhere.
The last 100 pages explain the important method of "Stellar Population Synthesis". This section is most useful & interesting.....as this is a rare example of over-busy professional astronomers managing to find sufficient free time to write-up relatively current research in a textbook. In other words, Salaris and Cassisi give us a good idea of how their science is done NOW, giving us an entree into the perilous shoals of current scientific research.
Stellar Population Synthesis allows us to make telescopic observations of the H-R Diagram, or of the integrated colors & spectra, of a star cluster or galaxy, and from these numbers to estimate the "time since formation" of a population of stars. Finding the age of a group of stars is one goal of this method, whether a single age (as for a star cluster) or an average age (as for a population of stars in a particular section of a galaxy). A second goal is to start with observations of a galaxy or part of a galaxy, and then to derive how star-formation (the Star Formation Rate) varied over the entire history of that galaxy. The method uses predictions of stars' evolutionary tracks to derive the expected colors & spectrum & Hertzprung-Russell Diagram for a group of stars of a specific age; so when we go to the telescope and observe the actual color & spectrum of a group of stars, we can compare these observables with the theoretically predicted colors & spectra that we expect for groups of stars and stellar populations of various ages. The method allows the estimation of how old a particular section of a galaxy actually is.
In summary, this volume is one of the clearest and most concise and most up-to-date books on Stellar Evolution aimed at the serious astronomer or physicist or applied mathematician.
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