Based on the most up-to-date astronomical research, The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Fifth Edition retains all of the features that have made this text so popular with new features helping students learn about the process of science and how to interpret visual data. The textbook package also includes updated supplements to support the book’s pedagogy, making it the most effective text in the one-semester astronomy market. The Fifth Edition focuses on building student appreciation of science by helping them understand how astronomers know what they know about the universe, and how information can be gleaned from looking at and interpreting images. To support these goals, the book features new See It For Yourself boxes, Process of Science end-of-chapter questions, Check Your Skills activities which help students learn how to read figures and photos, and five new Cosmic Context two-page figures on key topics throughout the text. Offered with The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Fifth Edition is an unparalleled media package designed to help professors and students seamlessly incorporate media into lectures and at-home study. MasteringAstronomy^™, the most easy-to-use, yet sophisticated astronomy tutorial and assessment system ever built, provides both instructor-assigned homework and a self-study area with quizzes, Interactive Tutorials^™, updated Interactive Figures and Photos^™, a brand new eBook, RSS news feeds that provide up-to-date articles from major astronomy news sources, and more. For additional instructor media,The Essential Cosmic Lecture Launcher DVD-ROM includes high resolution JPEGs of all images in the text, Interactive Figures and Photos based on figures from the book, PowerPoint^® Lecture Outlines, and Clicker Quizzes based on the book and book-specific interactive media, plus a variety of additional instructor resources. The Astronomy Media Workbook, Sixth Edition, provided on CD and at no extra cost,is now updated to correlate with the latest interactive media on MasteringAstronomy and Voyager: SkyGazer v4.0 planetarium software. Package Includes: MasteringAstronomy with E-book Student Access Kit Voyager: SkyGazer v4.0 College Edition CD-ROM