Freeman’s briefest, least expensive introductory astronomy text.Discovering the Essential Universe, Fifth Edition is one of the briefest texts available for the introductory astronomy course, while still providing the wide range of factual topics that are the hallmark of the text and are consistent with most course needs. Discovering the Essential Universe provides up-to-date explanations of core concepts in a flexible and student-friendly text, supported by an impressive collection of multimedia resources developed by astronomy education researchers. It is also up to date, reflecting how our knowledge about the universe is expanding at a phenomenal rate.