Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Active Galactic Nuclei

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This is an excellent book on the topic. Bradley Peterson works in the field and actively seeks to promote understanding of AGN through his book and lectures. The book provides detailed descriptions of what astronomers observe when they examine AGN and then goes on to develop what physics can be gleaned from those observations. The mathematical proofs start off simple enough and then are well-developed to allow for a solid understanding of the physics. This textbook is better up to date than some of its competitors and gives the reader insight as to what the current controversies and unresolved questions are in the field.

This text makes AGN accessible to the reader and is presented in a clear way, so that when you are finished, you will be interested to look up papers on the topic!

I'm using this text for my course on accretion power in AGN and till now have found the book to be extremely useful. However the author does seem to gloss over many of the derivations where an in depth look might have been preferred. Definitely a useful book to have if your studying AGN.

This is one of those rare science textbooks that one can read in leisure, sitting down for a few hours, and actually understand most of the material. The order is rational, it is however missing a few of the more recent developments.

Clear introduction to the field. I recommend this book to my undergraduate students who are starting to do research with me, and to my students in our upper division astrophysics class.