Galaxies in Turmoil

- Introduction

- What is a galaxy?

- Galaxies in general

- The difference between 'ordinary' and active galaxies

- The panoply of active galaxies: (Quasars, QSOs, Radio galaxies, BL Lacs, Blazars, LINERS, ULIRGS, Seyfert galaxies, Starburst galaxies, N galaxies, etc.)

- What they are and what they do? (The images of many active galaxies are beautiful and spectacular, and the inclusion of a significant number of colour photographs is essential to the book.)

- Active galaxies across the spectrum (Activities and behaviours at radio, infrared, ultra-violet, x-ray and gamma ray wavelengths)

- Explosions and jets

- Multiple jets and why there is sometimes only one jet

- Faster than light

- Superluminal motions and how they occur

- The central black holes

- Evidence for their existence

- Nature and properties of super-massive BHs

- Jets and accretion disks

- Energy sources

- How BHs produce the features of active galaxies?

- How the BHs form?- Could the Milky Way become an Active galaxy?

- What would happen to life on Earth?

- What will happen when the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy collide in 3,000 million years?

- Observing active galaxies using small telescopes

- Observing data (positions, magnitudes etc.) for the brighter active galaxies

- Bibliography / web site list

Chris Kitchin is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Hertfordshire and has a lifelong interest in astronomical instrumentation, using telescopes of all sizes, studying the rapidly growing number of planets known to orbit other stars, and trying to communicate his own excitement at the recent explosion of discoveries about the universe. When not a hundred light years from Earth (at least in his imagination), Chris enjoys being taken for long country walks by his two border collies. He is author of a vast number of scientific papers and books by various publishers.

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