JAM is for admission to M.Sc. and integrated PhD courses in IIT's.The exam is fairly standard B.Sc. stuff (depending on the university you read in).
Do your B.Sc. well, read standard books e.g. griffiths' quantum mechanics and electrodynamics,beiser's modern physics,optics by jenkins and...
Sorry, forgot to mention that Iam from India and the program is at an Indian research institute.
As far as I know different observatories use different telescopes to gather astrophysical data , doesn't that imply that one has to know few things about instrumentation itself like the kind of...
I have got an offer to do PhD in observational astrophysics.Now I have not studied astrophysics before so as far as I can make out a Phd in that consist of following four parts: theory, observation, computation and instrumentation. I want to know what fraction of time one has to spend in each of...
At advanced level there can be many but at more basic level I would recommend landau-lifgarbagez volumes 1 and 2, and whittaker-watson modern analysis.
Frankly I haven't heard of anyone doing M.Sc. physics through distance education, but if your university/degree is recognised by UGC then at least you can attempt NET or GATE.Best of luck.
Nice post aalaniz!I also enjoyed Jones' book on groups very much.Also georgi's book is one of its kind(I'm still trying to understand it)
One other book I'd like to mention which is a classic is Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics by B.L.van der Waerden.
I haven't gone through any of the books you mentioned.But that was my personal opinion and notation issues can vary from person to person.It also depends on what book is followed by your prof. in the class.
I did browsed through the book a few times and I didn't liked it much.Its notation is too clumsy for me.
I enjoyed reading Hammermash's book on group theory though.
Oh it is very much possible but for that you will have to clear M.Sc. entrance exams which will require knowledge of B.Sc.(physics) subjects which I don't think are taught in that much details in engineering courses.
My friend played the same trick on me in my computer lab and it took me a while to figure out what actually happened.
But since it was 1st of april that day so I forgave him.
I'm not sure that there is any course as such in India.However if you are really interested then you can do an M.Sc. in physics with spcialization in astronomy.