Fascinating, engaging, and extremely visual, this Enhanced Thirteenth Edition of FOUNDATIONS OF ASTRONOMY brings readers up-to-date on the developments and discoveries in the exciting field of astronomy as recent as the summer 2015 New Horizons studies of Pluto and its moons. Throughout the book, authors Michael Seeds and Dana Backman emphasize the scientific method as they guide students to answer two fundamental questions: What are we? And how do we know? In every chapter, the book discusses the interplay between evidence and hypothesis, providing both factual information and a conceptual framework for understanding the logic of science.

PART 1: THE SKY.
1. Here and Now.
2. A User’s Guide to the Sky.
3. Moon Phases and Eclipses.
4. Origins of Modern Astronomy.
5. Gravity.
6. Light and Telescopes.
PART 2: THE STARS.
7. Atoms and Spectra.
8. The Sun.
9. The Family of Stars.
10. The Interstellar Medium.
11. Formation and Structure of Stars.
12. Stellar Evolution.
13. Deaths of Stars.
14. Neutron Stars and Black Holes.
PART 3: GALAXIES AND THE UNIVERSE.
15. The Milky Way Galaxy.
16. Galaxies.
17. Supermassive Black Holes and Active Galaxies.
18. Modern Cosmology.
PART 4: THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
19. Origin of the Solar System and Extrasolar Planets.
20. Earth: The Active Planet.
21. The Moon and Mercury.
22. Venus and Mars.
23. Jupiter and Saturn.
24. Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Kuiper Belt.
25. Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets.
Part 5: LIFE.
26. Astrobiology.
Afterword.
Appendix A: Scientific Units and Astronomical Data.
Appendix B: Star Charts.
Glossary.

Fascinating, engaging, and extremely visual, this Enhanced Thirteenth Edition of FOUNDATIONS OF ASTRONOMY brings readers up-to-date on the developments and discoveries in the exciting field of astronomy as recent as the summer 2015 New Horizons studies of Pluto and its moons. Throughout the book, authors Michael Seeds and Dana Backman emphasize the scientific method as they guide students to answer two fundamental questions: What are we? And how do we know? In every chapter, the book discusses the interplay between evidence and hypothesis, providing both factual information and a conceptual framework for understanding the logic of science. New photos illustrating recent astronomical events add to the text’s strong visual appeal and help to engage students’ interest in chapter content. A versatile MindTap teaching and learning system is now available to support the text, providing a variety of useful resources, including assignable and gradable activities, pre- and post-learning assessments, and videos relevant to chapter material. The authors focus strongly on the scientific method throughout the text, using astronomy as a way to explore and explain fundamental scientific principles and processes. For example, "How Do We Know?" boxes highlight great moments in science from various disciplines to illustrate the logical processes scientists use to learn about nature. End-of-section "Doing Science" features help students review key concepts and hone critical thinking skills by considering how scientists construct logical arguments from observations, evidence, theories, and natural laws. Each feature includes a thoughtfully posed science question, sample answers to illustrate scientific reasoning, and a second question to allow students to construct their own argument. A unique art program showcases this visual science in striking style, with hallmark Concept Art Spreads providing two-page visual summaries of key concepts covered in the text, Concept Figures combining art and text to help students synthesize information as a unified concept, Guided Discovery Figures showing sequential frames of art to demonstrate processes that occur over time, and H–R diagrams designed to help students grasp key ideas at a glance. Whenever possible, the authors bring chapter content to life with captivating photographs from the Spitzer Infrared Observatory; the Chandra X-Ray Observatory; the Hubble Space Telescope; as well as images of Saturn, its rings, and its moons from the Cassini spacecraft; and images of Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Rosetta’s lander, Philae. Additionally, this Enhanced Edition includes new images of Pluto as photographed by NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft in summer 2015.