Prasenjit Saha is an astrophysicist working mainly on various aspects of gravitational dynamics, including gravitational lenses. He has also contributed to the literature on Bayesian inference, intensity interferometers, and literate programming. He got hooked on astrophysics from books like George Gamow's, and loves books that present a subject in an interesting and slightly subversive way.Paul A. Taylor completed his doctorate in the area of stellar astrophysics at the University of Oxford. He has subsequently been a tutor, visiting researcher and lecturer in the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) network in Cameroon, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. He continues to teach programming and signal processing within the AIMS network, and is also a staff scientist in the Scientific and Statistical Computing Core at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA.

• 1: Orbits 2: Celestial Mechanics 3: Schwarzschild's spacetime 4: Interlude: Quantum ideal gases 5: Gravity versus pressure 6: Nuclear fusion in stars 7: The main sequence of stars 8: The expanding Universe 9: The cosmic microwave background

This is a delightful small book... It will be a good resource for lecturers, showing some nice examples of applications of the physical principles, and of especial interest to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates. The reader is encouraged to write computer codes to find solutions, and the student with a thirst to learn and the motivation to engage fully with the book will be amply rewarded.

Prasenjit Saha is an astrophysicist working mainly on various aspects of gravitational dynamics, including gravitational lenses. He has also contributed to the literature on Bayesian inference, intensity interferometers, and literate programming. He got hooked on astrophysics from books like George Gamow's, and loves books that present a subject in an interesting and slightly subversive way.Paul A. Taylor completed his doctorate in the area of stellar astrophysics at the University of Oxford. He has subsequently been a tutor, visiting researcher and lecturer in the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) network in Cameroon, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. He continues to teach programming and signal processing within the AIMS network, and is also a staff scientist in the Scientific and Statistical Computing Core at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA.

• 1: Orbits 2: Celestial Mechanics 3: Schwarzschild's spacetime 4: Interlude: Quantum ideal gases 5: Gravity versus pressure 6: Nuclear fusion in stars 7: The main sequence of stars 8: The expanding Universe 9: The cosmic microwave background

This is a delightful small book... It will be a good resource for lecturers, showing some nice examples of applications of the physical principles, and of especial interest to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates. The reader is encouraged to write computer codes to find solutions, and the student with a thirst to learn and the motivation to engage fully with the book will be amply rewarded.

Prasenjit Saha is an astrophysicist working mainly on various aspects of gravitational dynamics, including gravitational lenses. He has also contributed to the literature on Bayesian inference, intensity interferometers, and literate programming. He got hooked on astrophysics from books like George Gamow's, and loves books that present a subject in an interesting and slightly subversive way.Paul A. Taylor completed his doctorate in the area of stellar astrophysics at the University of Oxford. He has subsequently been a tutor, visiting researcher and lecturer in the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) network in Cameroon, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. He continues to teach programming and signal processing within the AIMS network, and is also a staff scientist in the Scientific and Statistical Computing Core at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA.

• 1: Orbits 2: Celestial Mechanics 3: Schwarzschild's spacetime 4: Interlude: Quantum ideal gases 5: Gravity versus pressure 6: Nuclear fusion in stars 7: The main sequence of stars 8: The expanding Universe 9: The cosmic microwave background

This is a delightful small book... It will be a good resource for lecturers, showing some nice examples of applications of the physical principles, and of especial interest to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates. The reader is encouraged to write computer codes to find solutions, and the student with a thirst to learn and the motivation to engage fully with the book will be amply rewarded.