Introduction to the Interstellar Medium

The gas and dust between the stars emit across the electromagnetic spectrum and are found in a range of physical conditions from diffuse plasmas to cold, dense molecules. Through their study we see how quantum processes shape the structure of our Galaxy and fluid mechanics sets the stellar mass scale. The Interstellar Medium is a very broad subject with layers of complexity, a long history and a steady flow of new results. This comprehensive yet accessible textbook provides a self-contained one-semester course for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It is written in a style that students can follow by themselves and allows instructors to use class time to go deeper into the details or show applications to current research. It makes extensive use of publicly accessible data to illustrate specific points and to encourage students to learn by performing their own analyses.

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Observations; 3. Essential Background Physics; 4. Dust; 5. Atomic Regions; 6. Ionized Regions; 7 Molecular Regions; 8. Dynamics; 9. Star Formation; 10. The ISM on the Galactic Scale; 11. The ISM in Other Galaxies and Beyond; Appendix. Constants in SI and CGS Units; Nomenclature; References; Index.

Jonathan Williams is an Astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His research in the Interstellar Medium has ranged from the formation of the giant molecular clouds that form stars to the evolution of disks around young stars that give birth to planets. He has written pedagogical reviews on these topics and taught a wide variety of courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. This textbook builds on his course notes that have been widely used and class-tested over almost two decades.