My source of knowledge

Although this field is continually evolving, much of the basics is of course text-book stuff. The web provides a very valuable source of information, not just for pictures. Often, satellite mission web-pages have extremely well designed pages. Some links you might want to look at (and where I got many of the pictures) are:

• http://www.seds.org/
• http://www.aao.gov.au/images.html/
• http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/
• http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/tlnasa/pictures/picture.html
• http://astro.estec.esa.nl
• http://space.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/cobe/cobe_home.html
• http://astro.estec.esa.nl/Hipparcos/
• http://astro.estec.esa.nl/GAIA/

and the books I've used are

1

Carroll & Ostlie, Modern Astrophysics, Addison-Wesley, 1996

2

Zeilik & Gregory, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Saunders College Publishing, 1998

3

Binney & Merrifield, Galactic Astronomy, Princeton, 1998

4

Binney & Tremaine, Galactic Dynamics, Princeton, 1987

(I'll refer to these as CO, ZG, BM, and BT.) The first two are quite more general, [3] provides a nice overview on galaxies in much more detail than I'll do, and [4] of course concentrates on the dynamics of galaxies. [1] contains everything you need to know, in [2] you can often find the basics formulated in a very clear way, and [3] and [4] are where you could start looking if you want to know more.

A truly excellent web site where much of what I'll discuss is explained really well with many pictures, and by someone who knows what he's talking about, is by Chris Mihos, who is at the department of astronomy, Case Western University. You'll find it at:
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/Academics/Astr222/index.html, and you'll recognise some of the picture in my course as originating from there.