Customer Reviews

Evolutionary Processes in Binary and Multiple Stars (Cambridge Astrophysics)

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This book is aimed at the last year undergraduate student, graudade student or researchers. The reader is expected to be familiar with the terminology of stellar astrophysics (spectral types, magnitudes and like). Within that background the author presents an excellent introduction to binary and multiple stars.

The book begins with an interesting discussion on just what is a binary star. With the whole universe rotating about itself, a binary star is simply two stars that are closer than others. But in a dense star field 'closer' has to be closer than it does in a star desert where the orbits of binary stars may be on the order of centuries.

This is not a book for the amateur, the math is heavy duty, indeed the author moved to Livermore Labs to get closer to massive computing power. He has included a series of mathematical appendicies which give a concise but full account of the mathematics of the processes involved with star behavior.

I was greatly surprised with this book. The author present a detailed view of conservative and non-conservative binary star evolution with many examples, tables and references, exploring different possible scenarios. I use this book often as a reference for my own research. It is excellent for anybody who wants to go deep in the field of binary star evolution. I guess the level is for graduate students, although undergraduates can also find inspiration there.