Books on Astrophysics and astronomy

[sa.khan]

I have always been interested in astrophysics but my career took
another direction and I have an MS in computer science. I wanted
to go back and revive my interest. I have decent math/calculus
background, ODE, PDE, numerical methods including solving
PDE/ODEs, some linear algebra and vectors. I have basic working
knowledge of analytical/algebraic geometery.

I have read lot of stuff on astronomy but most of the ameture
lit. is not satsifying in that there are no details and no mathematical
treatment or explanations (e.g. scientific american).

I wanted to get started with some good textbooks on the subject
that has good conceptual and mathematical detail of the concepts.
e.g. I want to know how to use the various distance measuring methods,
like, statistical paralex...,I want to understand and know how to
calculate the mass of a star...and continue to harder more in depth
topics as I master these fundamentals. I have undergraduate physics
and some graduate math/calculus so I think I can handle the physicis
and math in the basic astrophysics stuff (I am purposely avoiding the
use of astronomy, as I get refs. to star gazing/charts. telescopes etc.
and I am really interested in the physics).

Any good recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks.

P.S. someone recommended Astrophysics by Ostllie and Carrolls, but
as I am starting out I don't know if that is a good choice.

 

[George Jones]

Foundations of Astrophysics by Barbara Ryden and Bradley M. Peterson,

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321595580/?tag=pfamazon01-20,

is much shorter than Carroll and Ostlie.

 

[cosmojo]

Personally I love Carroll and ostlie, if you want a general astro book use The Cosmic Perspective, not sure who it is by but we use it for our astro 101 class and it covers basically everything in science/physics terms but still closer to basic but more in depth than popular science articles.