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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

How does it happen that billions of stars can cooperate to produce the beautiful spirals that characterize so many galaxies, including ours? This book presents a theory of spiral structure that has been developed over the past three decades under the continuous stimulus of new observational studies. The theory unfolds in a way that can be grasped by any reader with an undergraduate science background who is interested in astronomy, as well as by graduate students and scientists actively involved in astronomy or related subjects who want to see the "backbone" and the physical content of the theory.

(Extracted from the dust jacket).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Preface.

-0. Introduction.

-I. Physical Concepts.

-1. Physical and Morphological Characteristics of Galaxies.
-2. The Concept of Density Waves.
-3. Density Waves, Interstellar Medium, and Star Formation.
-4. Regularity, Morphological Classification, and the Concept of Spiral Modes.

-II. Observational Studies.

-5. External Galaxies.
-6. The Milky Way.

-III. Dynamical Mechanisms.

-7. Basic Models and Relevant Parameter Regimes.
-8. Geometry of Wave Patterns.
-9. Local Properties of Waves: The Dispersion Relation for the Fluid Model.
-10. Excitation and Maintenance of Global Spiral Modes.
-11. Comments on the Evolutionary Process.
-12. A Look into the Future.

-Galaxies Illustrated in This Book.

-Index.

OUR REVIEW

Bertin and Lin present in this work a novel proposal that intends to explain the why of the spiral shapes in some galaxies, and they do so by claiming that the spirals we see in them are waves rather than material phenomena, and that they follow, in some way, the intrinsic characteristics of each galactic structure. Thus, the authors have divided the book into three parts, leaving for the last one the more technical aspects of their theory. The rest relies on a coherent narrative, apt for a specialized readership, with abundant graphics and photographs of a modern source.

Lin's and Bertin's proposals, however, have their basis in the early seventies, thanks to the pioneer work by B. Lindblad. Lin, up to then an expert in the field of fluid mechanics, decided to enter in that instant within the realm of spiral structures. Bertin would later join him from 1975 on, his contribution being a very important knowledge of elliptic galaxies and the astrophysics of plasma. Since then they both have worked hard to develop a theory which results as complete as possible to explain the origin and evolution of galactic spirals, relying in each moment on the latest discoveries made by other colleagues, both theoricians and observers. Thus, the density wave theory presented here, always in the most acceptable manner as feasible, is the result of many long years of efforts that surely have not seen their end yet, although it appears to have already reached the heights of a more than acceptable maturity.