Thoroughly revised, expanded and updated throughout, this new edition of Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei is a graduate-level text and reference book on gaseous nebulae, nova and supernova remnants, and the emission-line regions in Seyfert galaxies, radio galaxies, quasars, and other types of active galactic nuclei. Much of the new data and many of the new images are from the Hubble Space Telescope and some of the largest ground-based telescopes in the world. Two wholly new chapters have been added, one on infrared astronomy and the other on X-ray astronomy, reflecting the great advances in these fields. This new edition also contains two completely new appendices, one a long primer on the quantum-mechanical concepts used in the analysis of nebular emission-line spectra, and the other a briefer description of molecular spectra. Large amounts of new data on dust in nebulae and quasars, and the photo-dissociated regions containing neutral atoms, molecules, and dust within and around them, have also been added to the book. Thus, the previous edition of this classic text, which has been tried, tested, and widely used for thirty years, has now been succeeded by a new, revised, updated, larger edition, which will be valuable to anyone seriously interested in astrophysics.
Ferland, Gary J.: - Gary J. Ferland received his doctorate from the University of Texas and did post-graduate research at Cambridge University before joining the faculty of the University of Kentucky in 1980, where he is now Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Kentucky. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 publications, mainly on classical novae, active galactic nuclei, and H II regions. Ferland has also developed the plasma simulation program, Cloudy, which is widely used to create computer simulations (or "models") of the types of nebulae discussed in this book. In addition to serving on the faculty of University of Kentucky, he has spent periods at Ohio State University, the University of Colorado, the University of Toronto, Cambridge University, and Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory.
Osterbrock, Donald E.: - Donald E. Osterbrock is a world-renowned research astrophysicist, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Emeritus at Lick Observatory of the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was its director for eight years. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago at its Yerkes Observatory, was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, and was a faculty member at the California Institute of Technology, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was a staff member of Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories. Dr. Osterbrock was a council member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was president of the American Astronomical Society 1988-90, and was named its Henry Norris Russell lecturer, its highest honor, in 1991. He taught astronomy and astrophysics courses at Caltech, Wisconsin, and UCSC, and many of the current leaders of astrophysical research on nebulae and active galactic nuclei worked with him as Ph.D.-thesis students or as postdoctoral research associates.
