Looking for an astronomy class a little beyond the basics, but not requiring a PhD and taught by the experts? Here are four recommendations that are “out of this world.”

Formal school may have ended for many of us, but the thirst for more science knowledge, especially about astronomy topics, is still with us. The problem I suffer from is a terrible case of information overload: inundated with too many books, too many magazine articles, too many lectures, too many web sites and not enough time.

And, with so much poor quality or irrelevant content out there, I want to invest my time where it will be the most valuable to me. I want the “top shelf” content. At least in school my professors, who I trusted as experts in their field, guided me through the forest of knowledge and pointed out what was most important along the way.

Now out of school, I’ve found two resources that provide an even better solution to my information overload problem: The Teaching Company and Modern Scholar, which is produced and published by Recorded Books. Both of these companies provide recorded lectures of college professors from around the nation.

These recordings, both as audio or video, are not recorded books, which is another great resource, but are college professors, usually recorded in a studio in front of a selected audience, presenting each of their lectures from a full university course.

I usually take the CD or DVD with the lectures and rip it into mp3 or mp4 format so I can view it on my ipod, iphone or ipad. I can listen to a complete lecture each time I walk the dog.

From the Teaching Company, I have listened to three exceptional courses related to Astronomy.

Understanding the Universe, with Prof Alex Filippenko has 96, 45-minute lectures on the whole range of astronomy topics from comets to the big bang and everything in between. Prof Filippenko is a professor at UC Berkeley and is featured on many Nova and Discovery Channel shows. He is also one of the scientists who identified an anomaly in the expansion rate of the universe from supernova data which has lead to the suggestion of dark energy. This is the best Astronomy 101 class I have ever listened to. Check out his second series on Black Holes Explained.

Cosmology: The history and Nature of Our Universe, by Prof Mark Whittle. If cosmology is your thing, you will find nothing better than this lecture series. Prof Whittle, on the faculty at Univ of Virgina, is a superb lecturer. This is not the hyperbole of the Discovery Channel. This is the science of cosmology, brought to us with just enough math to show how the analysis is done. You will see how the percent of dark matter is deduced from the ripples in the cosmic background radiation, primordial nucleo-synthesis in the first 4 minutes and how galaxies got their arms, among other topics.

Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe, with Prof Sean Carroll takes you over the edge into the dark side. Though Prof Carroll is a professor at CalTech, these lectures are not quite at a CalTech freshman level, but close. With very little math, he walks us through the modern cosmology view of the composition of matter-energy in the evolving universe, the possible geometries of space-time, and possible explanations for dark energy. He takes a complex topic and translates it to our level.

From the Modern Scholar, I’ve listened to the lecture series:

Astronomy: Stars, Galaxies and the Universe, with Prof James Kaler. This lecture series, like the others, is at the freshman level. Though the content is similar to Filippanko’s lectures, Kaler focuses a little more on the astrophysics and the origin of the sometimes confusing terms used in Astronomy, like metalicity to describe all elements with an atomic number higher than helium, or red giants and red super giants, or planetary nebulae. It is a remarkable overview, encapsulated in only 14 lectures.

While all of these course can be purchased, they are often on sale for as low as $40 for the complete course and are available from libraries. Even if you listened to one lecture a day, it would take an entire year to go through just these four courses. And then, when you finish, there are about 1000 other great courses available from just these two companies. That’s a lifetime of learning, and it’s all top shelf stuff.