Advice on good astronomy textbook and planet websites?

I am looking for an entry level Astronomy text, say what one would expect
at 1st Year university or the Open University Astronomy course. Not just a
glorified observers handbook. Any recommendations?

I presently have a somewhat dated version (5th Edition, 1994) of
Astronomy: The Cosmic Journey, by Hartmann and Impey. It is about the
level I want but very dated regarding new planetary science from spacecaft
over the past 14 years. Also the book is very American with its gooey
rah-rah prose. Can anyone also recommend a good reference website which
might contain more of the recent findings about planets?

Larry Gagnon--
For direct email remove fake.

"Larry Gagnon" <lggagnon@fakeuniserve.com> wrote in message
newsp.ujwwdyz7aiss39@localhost...


For our evening course in astronomy at UCL (two years, part time,
Certificate of Higher Education in Astronomy) we adopted Freedman and
Kaufmann, Universe, 8th Ed (currently). This is at the level of a first
year American university (non-calculus) course and gives good general
backgrounds. We had examined a considerable number of other books and felt
this was the right one for our course, though no book was perfect.
Pasachoff, University Astronomy, is also quite good.

If you want a UK first-year-level calculus-based text, suitable for a UK
honours degree, please specify that.

If you want a specialised book on the planets, is there a recent edition of
The New Solar System? Also, Barrie Jones is at Open U. Does he have a
recent or updated "planets" book available?

The problem is, with so many new ideas and discoveries around, any book is
bound to be out of date in some aspect before it sees print. Chapters on
Mercury would be a case in point.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

In uk.sci.astronomy message <op.ujwwdyz7aiss39@localhost>, Fri, 31 Oct
2008 16:19:00, Larry Gagnon <lggagnon@fakeuniserve.com> posted:

Did you try a search of Amazon, etc., for "Open University Astronomy
course" without quotes?

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