Ancient history

It was a challenge to write this third edition of High Energy Astrophysics. Writing the first edition was great fun and that rather slim volume reflected rather closely the lecturing style I adopted in presenting high energy astrophysics to final-year undergraduates in the period 1973–7. Although the material was updated when the manuscript was sent to the press in 1980, the book remained in essence a lecture course (Longair, 1981). The reception of the book was encouraging and in due course a second edition was needed. The subject had advanced so rapidly during the 1980s and early 1990s that the material could not be comfortably contained within one volume. The aim was originally to complete the task in two volumes, but by the time the Volumes 1 and 2 were completed, I had only reached the edge of our own Galaxy (Longair, 1997b,c). Volume 3 was begun, but for various reasons, was not completed – the whole project was becoming somewhat unwieldy.

In the meantime, I completed three other major book-writing projects. The first of these was a new edition of Theoretical Concepts in Physics (Longair, 2003). Then, I completed The Cosmic Century: A History of Astrophysics and Cosmology (Longair, 2006). Finally, in 2008, the new edition of Galaxy Formation was published (Longair, 2008).

The new edition

Since the second edition of High Energy Astrophysics, many of the subject areas have changed out of all recognition and new areas of astrophysical research have been opened up, for example, ultra-high energy gamma-ray astronomy.