Product Description
Over the past ten years, the discovery of extrasolar planets has opened a new field of astronomy, and this area of research is rapidly growing, from both the observational and theoretical point of view. The presence of many giant exoplanets in the close vicinity of their star shows that these newly discovered planetary systems are very different from the solar system. New theoretical models are being developed in order to understand their formation scenarios, and new observational methods are being implemented to increase the sensitivity of exoplanet detections. In the present book, the authors address the question of planetary systems from all aspects. Starting from the facts (the detection of more than 300 extraterrestrial planets), they first describe the various methods used for these discoveries and propose a synthetic analysis of their global properties. They then consider the observations of young stars and circumstellar disks and address the case of the solar system as a specific example, different from the newly discovered systems. Then the study of planetary systems and of exoplanets is presented from a more theoretical point of view. The book ends with an outlook to future astronomical projects, and a description of the search for life on exoplanets. This book addresses students and researchers who wish to better understand this newly expanding field of research.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 1 review)

Very Good Exposition of Extra-Solar Planets by Jim (Toronto, Canada)

5 Stars
January 07, 2010
This book is an excellent introduction to Extra-solar planets. I used it as a good "starting" or "jump-off" text into the area of exoplanets in terms of a research paper I had to write about this subject, i.e., to give me an overview of the subject and to lead me into the published scientific literature. The text is very well-written. There are many helful illustrations, all nicely captioned, and each chapter has a very good bibliography that I very much appreciated in breaking into the scientific papers out there. For a subject still in its infancy, the authors were able to provide a nice break-down of the scientific findings rapidly developing as new exoplanets are being found at an amazing clip. Interestingly, during the course of preparing my paper (over two months), the number of exoplanets went up from 370 to just over 400. The number is now beyond this. Writing a concise book in an area developing so rapidly and that was practically non-existent 10-15 years ago must have been a real challenge to the authors, but in my view, they handled it very nicely. Nevertheless, while the book serves as a nice text on the subject, it will also be enjoyed by any reader with a passing interest in exoplanets, and thus would serve as a nice "general read" as well. Non-technical readers will not find the mathematics in the text over-powering, and the text will more than make up for any mathematics that is not comprehended. A really nice book and an important contribution to a new and burdgeoning area of science.

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