Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium [Hardcover]

Jr. Lyman Spitzer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1978 | ISBN-10: 0471022322 | ISBN-13: 978-0471022329

Now available in paperback as a Wiley Classics edition, this book presents a comprehensive treatment on the relation of physical processes to interstellar matter. Provides a focus on constant physical principles needed to comprehend rapidly changing observational results in this field.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Discusses the nature of interstellar matter, with a strong emphasis on basic physical principles. Summarizes the present state of knowledge about the interstellar medium and provides the latest observational data. Physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium are treated, with frequent references to observational results. The overall equilibrium and dynamical state of the interstellar gas are described, with discussions of explosions produced by star birth and star death and the initial phases of cloud collapse leading to star formation.

About the Author

Lyman Spitzer, Jr. studied at Yale and Cambridge Universities and earned his Ph.D. under Henry Norris Russell at Princeton University. Following research at Harvard, teaching at Yale, and war work in New York, Spitzer succeeded Russell as professor and observatory director at Princeton in 1947. He promptly hired Martin Schwarzschild, with whom he built a major research department. Spitzer worked in many areas of theoretical astrophysics, including spectral line formation, the dynamical evolution of star clusters, and star formation. His most important work was on the physics of the interstellar medium. He showed that there must be at least two phases - high temperature clouds around hot stars and cooler intercloud regions, and led in studies of interstellar dust grains and magnetic fields. Spitzer was the first to propose a large telescope in space (in 1946) - he was analyzing data from the Hubble Space Telescope the day he died. He led the development and operation of the ultraviolet astronomy satellite Copernicus. An early leader in attempts to harness controlled thermonuclear fusion on earth, he was the founder and first director of the Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory (originally called Project Matterhorn). Lyman Spitzer, Jr., died in 1997. One of NASA's four Great Observatories is named the Spitzer Space Telescope in his memory. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc (January 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471022322
• ISBN-13: 978-0471022329
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,033,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A classic in astronomy, but not worth the price for students, December 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium (Hardcover)

Here, Spitzer introduces many fundamental concepts in astronomy, and at the time it was written was perhaps the only single publication that covered all of the topics in the table of contents from a fairly fundamental level.

When I paid $80 for this book for an Interstellar
Medium course about 5 years ago, the instructor
said he would not have required it had he known the price. Now it stands at $112!

If this material is important to you and you do not
have a well developed graduate level curriculum
to study from, then perhaps it is worthhwhile, otherwise I recommend "Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei"
by Donald E. Osterbrock for $36 as an excellent substitute, though you won't find much on dust grains and kinetics in it. For those topics you
should go to review articles and a statistical mechanics text anyway!

Spitzer was a great astronomer and he wrote what was at the time an indispensible book, but at this price think carefully before you buy.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, April 11, 2007

By 

ISM "ISM" (North Pole) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium (Wiley Classics Library) (Paperback)

good book

lot's of useful informations.

It's good to have one.