Not so very long ago, a colleague of mine, during a conversation between us about astronomy, took issue with the fact that I had conflated it with astrophysics. “The two are very different,” he insisted. He having studied the latter at university, and not being particularly learned in either subject myself, I was confused regarding the distinctions between the two – and, to be perfectly honest, have been ever since.
Fortunately, as they have done so many times in the past on so many subjects, Oxford University Press has once again come to my aid with a well-timed new volume of their Very Short Introductions series. Published just this very month, Astrophysics; A Very Short Introduction should greatly help in my understanding of the subject – including allowing me to properly interpret its relationship to the study of astronomy.
