An Introduction to Radio Astronomy Authors:Bernard F. Burke and F.Graham-Smith Publisher: CUP ISBN: 978-0-521-87808-1 Price: £ 40 (Hb), 456pp
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This is the third edition of the classic textbook written by two of the world's leading radio astronomers. It provides a comprehensive review of the subject, both in terms of the instruments and techniques employed and the knowledge of the Universe that are revealed by them.

The first half of the book describes how radio sources emit radio waves and how radio telescopes are used, both as single dishes and increasingly in arrays of antennas, to receive and analyse them. It covers the newly developing radio telescope arrays such as LOFAR - the low frequency array that spans Europe, ALMA - the Atacama Large Millimetre Array in Chile - and, now being designed, the Square Kilometre Array which will give astronomers a capability to probe the ‘dark ages’ before the formation of the galaxies.

The second half of the book reviews the observations of our Universe made with them, from our own Galaxy and the stars and pulsars within it to distant radio galaxies and quasars powered by super-massive black holes. A significant addition to this edition is the provision of two new chapters on cosmology – the origin and evolution of the Universe – including the latest observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background made by the WMAP spacecraft.

It must be stressed however, that this is a graduate text book and thus employs a high level of mathematics throughout – perfect for its intended reader, but somewhat daunting for the amateur astronomer who might wish to learn more about radio astronomy. Having said that, there is no doubt that a keen reader could ignore the mathematics and still get a very good feel of how our understanding of the Universe has been greatly enhanced by this exciting branch of astronomy.

Ian Morison