It is well-written and accessible to anyone with a modest grasp of calculus, providing an excellent introduction to the whole field: everything from Kepler's laws, through spectra, special relativity, stellar evolution, binary systems to galactic evolution and a brief introduction to cosmology.

The book is structured into sections and within each section are a number of chapters, each of which is a series of effective tutorials, typically building one upon the other.

(I purchased my copy near the beginning of a vacation to the UK, and found it so absorbing that I missed a good part of the countryside I had come to see, and considerably annoyed my family. Eventually, in Dublin, we agreed that Carroll & Ostlie would have to be consigned to a cardboard box and posted
home.)