Galactic Astronomy: Structure and Kinematics

The book `Galactic Astronomy: Structure and Kinematics', by Dimitri Mihalas and James Binney, is a classic, basic text for those interested beyond the basic level of what a galaxy is and how it is structured. This is a revision of a text first written in 1967 -- as scientific advances have proceeded at an ever increasing speed, this text too is lacking in many of the most recent discoveries and interpretations. However, it still provides a significant introduction to many basic ideas and patterns that have not changed over time. There has been a follow-up by James Binney and Michael Merrifield published recently.Galactic astronomy, with the increasing understanding of large-scale physics and the increasing data from telescopes, both visual and extra-visual, has made great strides in understanding the composition, motions and developments of galaxies -- not only spiral galaxies such as our own, but other galactic shapes and structures, too. This book addresses the structure and kinematics. A word of explanation: kinematics is the study of motion without reference to the forces which cause the motion -- dynamics addresses that, and that is not included in this text, but rather left for a second volume. This volume begins with a basic overview of the our conception of our own galaxy, giving a brief historical overview of explanations about the Milky Way and how this developed into the idea of a disc of stars; the recognition of our Sun being not in the centre but rather in a more unremarkable spot on one of the arms of the galaxy; the increasing knowledge from better and better observational data of the number of stars and other constituents of the galaxy, and the plotting of movement of individual stars and the collective motion of the galaxy. With the additional charting of dark matter, globular clusters, and other pieces, an increasingly accurate portrait of our home galaxy has been made.The volume then gives a 'refresher' on astronomical terminology and concepts as related to galactic astronomy. Positions and coordinate systems, motions, measurements using parallax, stellar spectra, magnitudes and colours, energy distributions, and a refresher on the cataloguing system help to put the rest of the text in perspective. Particularly as galaxies are primarily made up of stars, the physical properties stars--masses, evolution, types of stars--are examined in detail, along with information about interstellar absorption and other galactic constituents. Then, galactic astronomy begins in earnest, with a discussion of the distribution of stars and other elements in our own galaxy. Methods of star counting, apparent versus real distribution of stars and elements, distribution in the disc and distribution in the spheroidal component, as well as stellar populations are covered. From here, a description of other types of galaxies (morphology, magnitudes, distances, spectrophotometric properties) enlarges the ideas of galactic ideas. In examining other galact