Another good book, which you might use in addition, is Andrew Liddle, "An Introduction to Modern Cosmology", John Wiley & Sons Ltd. (about 40.- $).
Another compact representation of the important mathematics in cosmology is given in Michael Berry "Principles of Cosmology and Gravitation", Cambridge University Press (about 25.-$).
As a preparation and because it is a nice book to read, you might want to try Steven Weinberg "The First Three Minutes", BasicBooks (about 11.- $). This is a good book to read on the beach or during free time. And with the contents you can impress your friends on parties (note:cosmology is always a good party topic as long as you keep it simple).
For general physics there are a lot of books, e.g. Tipler "Modern Physics" or Marcelo Alonso, Edward J. Finn "Physics" (Pearson Addison Wesley). As you already joined Introductory Physics I & II, you will have a book like this.
There are many sources to get information. The internet is one of them - but be careful and do not trust everything you read there. Even Wikipedia is not always right! It is always better to use a citeable reference, e.g. a scientific journal or text book. You find resources in the UMBC library (also on-line!). New astrophysical articles can be searched and retrieved from the astro-ph preprint server. Access to mostly all astrophysical journal articles is available through ADS.
In the following table colour coding is used to indicate the level of complexity the articles have:
- basic knowledge. You do not have to read this article/book/wepage, but you should know the basics. Either from this source or from another.
- detailed description of topics discussed in the lecture. Very often review articles. Read as far as you understand them.
- articles about recent research. This is to see what the problems in this particular field are about today. Do not worry if you do not understand much - try to understand what the problem is and how the authors solved them.
Lecture # | Topic | Literature |
1 | Introduction |
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2 | Fundamental observations |
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3 | Distances in the Universe |
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4 | Black Body radiation |
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5 | Cosmic Microwave Background |
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6 | Equivalent Principle |
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7 | General Relativity |
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8 | Dark Energy |
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9 | Cosmological models |
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11 | Single Component Universe |
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12 | Multiple Component Universe |
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13 | The Benchmark Model |
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15 | Super Novae Type Ia |
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16 | Observations |
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17 | Dark Matter |
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18 | Summary |
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19 | Cosmic Microwave Background |
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20 | Cosmic Microwave Background |
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25 | Inflation |
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26 | Big Questions |
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27 | Summary of the course |
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Bonus | X-ray astronomy |
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