Need Astronomy book recommendation

[Pip]

I will be teaching Astronomy in co-op next year. It will be for high school credit. One student will be in Algebra 1, the other will possibly reach Alg. 1 by that point. Interest is high in the course but only one student is interested in pursuing science. I looked at the recommendations in WTM and I think reading Koeppler, Copernicus and Galileo will be too much. But I do need something meaty. These kids have already BTDT with basic astronomy.

 

BTW, I will use the experimets guide recommendations in WTM.

 

Secular would be preferred. We have BJU Space and Earth. We could do a syllabus and have the students choose their own materials. Could this be beefed up to use for high school credit. The science portion of their books is pretty hefty.

 

I should probably add that the sciencey one is my dd who is interested in studying astronomy in college. Would something like Conceptual Physics be a better option?

Edited March 11, 2010 by Pip

[Corraleno]

The Cosmos by Pasachoff & Filippenko is a very good college-level nonmajors astronomy text that's very accessible. It's the recommended text for the Teaching Company astronomy course, both of which I'm planning to use next year with a 7th grader. It's not mathy at all, and only the last 3 chapters (18-20) cover the birth of the universe and other topics that might bother YE Creationists, so students could skip those if they wanted.

 

I bought my copy for about $20 from a used textbook seller, but here is a link on Amazon to the book. You could always use a previous edition if you can't find enough cheap used copies of the 3rd edition.

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Astronomy-Millennium-AceAstronomy%C2%99-Virtual/dp/049501303X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268319544&sr=8-1

 

Jackie