These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle
physicistsinterested in the recent developmentsin astrophysics and cosmology.
I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe,
with its successes and shortcomings, which will lead to inflationary cosmology
as the paradigm for the origin of the global structure of the universe as well as
the origin of the spectrum of density perturbations responsible for structure in
our local patch. I will present a review of the very rich phenomenology that we
have in cosmology today, as well as evidence for the observational revolution
that this field is going through, which will provide us, in the next few years,
with an accurate determination of the parameters of our standard cosmological
model.