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This book summarizes the recent progress in the physics and astrophysics of neutron stars and, most importantly, it identifies and develops effective strategies to explore, both theoretically and observationally, the many remaining open questions in the field. Because of its significance in the solution of many fundamental questions in nuclear physics, astrophysics and gravitational physics, the study of neutron stars has seen enormous progress over the last years and has been very successful in improving our understanding in these fascinating compact objects. The book addresses a wide spectrum of readers, from students to senior researchers. Thirteen chapters written by internationally renowned experts offer a thorough overview of the various facets of this interdisciplinary science, from neutron star formation in supernovae, pulsars, equations of state super dense matter, gravitational wave emission, to alternative theories of gravity. The book was initiated by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action MP1304 “Exploring fundamental physics with compact stars” (NewCompStar).

This volume contains the Proceedings of the Fifth Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Espanola de Astronomfa, SEA). The meeting was held at the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha in Toledo, from September 9 to 13, 2002. The event brought together 219 participants who pre­ sented their latest results in many different subjects. In comparison with the previous scientific meetings of the Society, the numbers of oral talks and poster contributions (122 and 64, respectively) are rapidly increasing, confirming that the SEA conferences are becoming a point of reference to assess the interests and achievements of astrophysical research in Spain. During the meeting, the SEA made public the granting of the Prize to the Best Spanish Ph. D. Thesis in As­ tronomy and Astrophysics for the period 2000-2001 ex aequo to Dr. A. Zurita and Dr. E. Villaver. This is the second time that the SEA is awarding this prize, which aim is to encourage young spanish astrophysicists to pursue a high level scientific career. The Society is indebted to the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, and, in particular, to the San Pedro Martir staff, for its hospitality. It is also indebted to the Local Organizing Committee for its dedication and the good atmosphere that prevailed at any moment, and to the Scientific Organizing Committee for its excel­ lent work.

This NATO Advanced Study Institute course provided an updated understanding, from a fundamental and deep point of view, of the progress and current problems in the early universe, cosmic microwave background radiation, large-scale struc­ ture, dark matter problem, and the interplay between them. Emphasis was placed on the mutual impact of fundamental physics and cosmology, both at the theo­ retical and experimental or observational levels, within a deep and well defined programme, and a global unifying view, which, in addition, provides of careful inter-disciplinarity. In addition, each course of this series introduced and promoted topics or sub­ jects which, although not of a purely astrophysical or cosmological nature, were of relevant physical interest for astrophysics and cosmology. Deep understanding, clarification, synthesis, and careful interdisciplinarity within a fundamental physics framework, were the main goals of the course. Lectures ranged from a motivation and pedagogical introduction for students and participants not directly working in the field to the latest developments and most recent results. All lectures were plenary, had the same duration, and were followed by a discus­ sion. The course brought together experimentalists and theoreticans physicists, astro­ physicists and astronomers from a wide variety of backgrounds, including young scientists at the post-doctoral level, senior scientists and advanced graduate stu­ dents as well.

The NATO Advanced Study Institute'Cosmological Aspects of X-Ray Clus­ ters of Galaxies'took place in Vel en, Westphalia, Germany, from June 6 to June 18, 1993. It addressed the fruitful union of two topics, cosmology and X-ray clus­ ters, both of which carry substantial scientific weight at the beginning of the last decenium of the last century in the second millenium of our era. The so far largest X-ray'All-Sky Survey', observed by the ROSAT X-ray satel­ lite, and ROSAT's deep pointed observations, have considerably enlarged the base of X-ray astronomy, particularly concerning extragalactic sources. Cosmology has gained significant impetus from the large optical direct and spectroscopic surveys, based on high quality 2-dimensional receivers at large telescopes and powerful scan­ ning devices, harvesting the full information 1 content from the older technique of employing photographic plates. Radioastronomy and IR-astronomy with IRAS, as well as r-astronomy with GRO, continue and strengthen the role of extragalactic research. The rapidly growing computer power in data reduction and data storage facilities support the evolution towards large-number statistics. A most significant push was given to early cosmology by the needs of physics in trying to unravel the nature of forces which govern our material world. The topic of the ASI was chosen because it opens new vistas on this for ever new problem: the universe. Clusters of galaxies probe large-scale matter distributions and the structure of space-time.

The amount of cosmological data has dramatically increased in the past decades due to an unprecedented development of telescopes, detectors and satellites. Efficiently handling and analysing new data of the order of terabytes per day requires not only computer power to be processed but also the development of sophisticated algorithms and pipelines.Aiming at students and researchers the lecture notes in this volume explain in pedagogical manner the best techniques used to extract information from cosmological data, as well as reliable methods that should help us improve our view of the universe.

Are we living in the'golden age'of cosmology? Are we close to understanding the nature of the unknown ingredients of the currently most accepted cosmological model and the physics of the early Universe? Or are we instead approaching a paradigm shift? What is dark matter and does it exist? How is it distributed around galaxies and clusters? Is the scientific community open to alternative ideas that may prompt a new scientific revolution - as the Copernican revolution did in Galileo's time? Do other types of supernovae exist that can be of interest for cosmology? Why have quasars never been effectively used as standard candles? Can you tell us about the scientific adventure of COBE? How does the extraction of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy depend on the subtraction of the various astrophysical foregrounds? These, among many others, are the astrophysical, philosophical and sociological questions surrounding modern cosmology and the scientific community that Mauro D'Onofrio and Carlo Burigana pose to some of the most prominent cosmologists of our time. Triggered by these questions and in the spirit of Galileo's book'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems'the roughly 40 interview partners reply in the form of essays, with a critical frankness not normally found in reviews, monographs or textbooks.

The study of clusters of galaxies has advanced tremendously in the recent years due to the advent of large or dedicated ground-based telescopes, the increasingly sensitive space observatories and the significant advances in numerical astrophysics and cosmology. The current generations of large spectroscopic and wide-field imaging survey and ongoing multi-wavelength studies, covering a large range of the electromagnetic spectrum from X-rays to the sub-mm and the radio, are making major breakthroughs in our understanding of galaxy aggregation and transformation processes in different environments, on the properties of the tenuous ICM gas, on the starburst activity and on revealing environmental effects on galaxy formation and evolution. The reviews presented in this volume cover a wide-range of cluster of galaxies topics like the physics of the ICM gas, the internal cluster dynamics, the detection of clusters using different observational techniques, the great advances in analytical or numerical modeling of clusters, weak and strong lensing effects, the large scale structure as traced by clusters, the cosmological significance of clusters as well as the formation and evolution of clusters within the new cosmological paradigm. This volume is aimed towards the researchers and senior graduate students in multi-wavelength astrophysics and cosmology.

This is the second edition of my book Galaxy Formation. Many people liked the rst edition which appeared in 1998, just before the explosion of magni cent new data which have completely changed the face of astrophysical cosmology. Many of the agonies which had to be gone through in the rst edition have disappeared and, to many people's amazement, including mine, there is now a concordance model for cosmology, the cosmologist's equivalent of the particle physicist's standard model. Just like the standard model, however, the concordance model creates as many problems as it solves. This is not a cause for concern, but rather one for celebration because we are now able to ask much better and deeper questions than in the past. These questions indicate clearly the need for physics and astrophysics ‘Beyond the Concordance Model'. Theobjectofthisneweditionistobringthisamazingstoryup-to-date,verymuch inthespiritofthe rstedition.Torecapitulatesomeofthepointsmadeintheprevious prefaceabouttheoriginofthebook,IwasaskedbySpringer-Verlagtoexpandtheset of lecture notes that I prepared in 1988 for the First Astrophysics School organised by the European Astrophysics Doctoral Network into a full-length book. The set of notes was entitled Galaxy Formation and was published as a chapter of the volume Evolution of Galaxies: Astronomical Observations (eds. I. Appenzeller, H.J. Habing andP.Lena,pages1to93,Springer-VerlagBerlin,Heidelberg,1989).Inthatchapter, Iattemptedtobridgethegapbetweenelementarycosmologyandthetechnicalpapers appearing in the literature which can seem quite daunting on rst encounter. The objective was to present the physical ideas and key results as clearly as possible as an introduction and guide to the technical literature.

Starbursts are important features of early galaxy evolution. Many of the distant, high-redshift galaxies we are able to detect are in a starbursting phase, often apparently provoked by a violent gravitational interaction with another galaxy. In fact, if we did not know that major starbursts existed, these conference proceedings testify that we would indeed have difficulties explaining the key properties of the Universe! These conference proceedings cover starbursts from the small-scale star-forming regions in nearby galaxies to galaxy-wide events at high redshifts; one of the major themes of the conference proved to be'scalability', i.e., can we scale up the small-scale events to describe the physics on larger scales. The key outcome of this meeting – and these proceedings – is a resounding'yes'to this fundamental, yet profound question. The enhanced synergy facilitated by the collaboration among observers using cutting-edge ground and space-based facilities, theorists and modellers has made these proceedings a true reflection of the state of the art in this very rapidly evolving field.

Mergers are the mechanisms by which galaxy clusters are assembled through the hierarchical growth of smaller clusters and groups. Major cluster mergers are the most energetic events in the Universe since the Big Bang. Many of the observed properties of clusters depend on the physics of the merging process. These include substructure, shock, intra cluster plasma temperature and entropy structure, mixing of heavy elements within the intra cluster medium, acceleration of high-energy particles, formation of radio halos and the effects on the galaxy radio emission. This book reviews our current understanding of cluster merging from an observational and theoretical perspective, and is appropriate for both graduate students and researchers in the field.