Grader

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Online grades

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Week 1

• Lecture 01: Proves that the Earth orbits the Sun. Notes 01 pdf.
  • See Tycho Brahe criticism of Copernicus heliocentric model.

Week 2

• Lecture 02: Did Greeks know distances to planets and the Moon? Notes 02 pdf.
• Lecture 03: Parallax, telescopes, and diffraction limited optics. Notes 03 pdf.
• Lecture 04: Atmosphere problem, “beating” the diffraction limited optics: Michelson and Hanbury-Brown-Twiss experiments. Notes 04 pdf.
  • Crab nebula images taken with different type of telescopes
    • highter resolution
  • See also sky with Cromoscope X-ray, visible, infrared, etc
  • Link to 1921 popular astronomy article describing Michelson experiment

Week 3

• Lecture 05: Kepler’s laws. Derivation of the 2nd law and its equivalent to the angular momentum conservation. Notes 05 pdf.
• Lecture 06: Orbits shapes, 1st Kepler’s law derived. Notes 06 pdf.
• Lecture 07: 3rd Kepler’s law derived. Recipe to find the mass of an object in the sky. Notes 07 pdf.

Week 4

• Lecture 08: Kepler’s laws and binary stars. Notes 08 pdf.
• Lecture 09: Black body radiation derivation. Notes 09 pdf.
• Out of sequence lecture: Gravitational Waves and their detection with LIGO

Week 5

• Lecture 10: Black body radiation continued, luminosity, star apparent and absolute magnitude. Notes 10 pdf.
• Lecture 11: Exoplanet search methods. Notes 11 pdf.
  • see posters at astrocomb webpage related to radial velocity method
  • The Exoplanets data explorer
  • The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
  • See Wikipedia exoplanet for directly observed images of exoplanets

Week 6

• Lecture 12: Stars spectroscopy. Notes 12 pdf.
  • Hydrogen energy levels
  • Hydrogen spectrum
  • stellar spectral lines
  • stellar spectral lines
• Lecture 13: Spectral line disappearance mystery and Saha equation. Notes 13 pdf.
• Lecture 14: The Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram, mass-size-luminosity relationship. Notes 14 pdf.
  • Original 1914 paper by Russel (search for Figure 1)
  • H-R diagram for real stars
  • H-R with star classes
  • H-R diagram with star size isolines
  • A0 stars spectra comparison
  • more in Morgan-Keenan-Kellman atlas of stellar spectra

Week 6

• Lecture 15: Light absorption coefficient. Notes 15 pdf.
• Lecture 16: Light source function, star edge darkening, depth of probing as function of absorption. Notes 16 pdf.
• Lecture 17: Voigt profile, density and linewidth curve of growth. Notes 17 pdf.

Week 7

• Lecture 18: Possible energy source for stars. Notes 18 pdf.
• Lecture 19: Requirements for nuclear fusion and hydrostatic equilibrium. Notes 19 pdf.
• Lecture 20: Photon and ideal gas pressure and its connection to temperature, quantum tunneling correction to required temperature for fusion. Notes 20 pdf.

Week 8

• Lecture 21: Gamow peak, fusion reactions rate. Notes 21 pdf.
  • Binding energy per nucleon
• Lecture 22: Star mass and its life time. Sun and magnetic field dynamics, mystery of hot corona.
  • Sun spots from Solar and heliospheric observatory (SOHO)
    • sun spot images today
    • sun spot images 05/07/2006
    • sun spot images 09/23/2011
    • sun spot images 09/24/2011
    • sun spot images 09/25/2011
    • movie taken at He I 10830 Å wavelength
    • Sun spot and granulation
  • Sun spots number vs time
  • Sun spots latitude vs time
  • Solar movies
    • Solar movies long time observation at UV and others wavelength for comparison
    • Coronal mass ejection
  • Sun X-ray 1 year activity, composite image
  • Flares
  • Coronal rain
• Lecture 23: Cepheids - variable stars. Pressure as a restoring force. Notes 23 pdf.

Week 9

• Lecture 24: Variable stars continued. Driving mechanism, modes of oscillation, the Sun 5 minutes oscillation, gravity as restoring force. Notes 24 pdf.
• Lecture 25: Proto star formation. The Jeans criteria for cloud collapse. Notes 25 pdf.
  • Sky with Cromoscope X-ray, visible, infrared, etc.
  • Zoom in on the Orion nebula (sword)
• Lecture 26: Proto star formation. Cloud collapsing time. Notes 26 pdf.

Week 10

• Midterm 02.
• Lecture 27: Spectral properties of clouds and nebulae. Clouds break down, jets, planets formation. Notes 27 pdf.
  • dark clouds
    • The Bok globule B68 and star reddening
    • the Horsehead nebula
    • one more picture of the Horsehead nebula
    • video which shows the Horsehead nebula in prospective
  • Emission nebulas
    • globules in the Eagle nebula (example of emission nebula)
      • well visible dark globules
      • composite image with X-ray shows hot young stars
    • IC 2944 a.k.a. Running Chicken Nebula
      • Globules within IC 2944 stellar nursery
  • reflection nebula
  • accretion disk and jets in HH30
  • jets and Herbig-Haro objects
  • Nursery of stars
  • proto planets disks prolyds
  • face on protoplanetary disks
    • TW Hydrae
      
    • HL Tauri
  • debris disk of betta Pictoris as planet
  • a planet in the disk of betta Pictoris
• Lecture 28: Fate of not too massive stars Notes 28 pdf.
  • Most main sequence evolution
    • Have a look at stars evolution tracks there
  • Late evolution track for a Sun like star. Taken from
  • Planetary Nebulae (remains of stars) gallery
    • Sun like star leftovers: PK 164
    • Helix Nebula
      • visible
      • composite
    • Cat’s eye nebula
      • image 1
      • image 2
    • Butterfly like nebulae
      • M2-9
      • Ant nebula
  • Star clusters
    • M13 in Hercules
    • The Pleiades Star Cluster M45
    • M3
  • HR diagram of M55 cluster

Week 11

• Lecture 29: Fate of massive stars. Supernovae. Notes 29 pdf.
  • Supernova SN 1994D outshines galaxy NGC 4526
  • Supernovae spectra
  • Type II-L light curve sign of radioactive decay time scale.
  • Supernova 1987A
    • before and after
    • recent image
    • visual and radio emission composite
    • evolution
    • educational video
  • Crab nebula remains of supernova seen in 1054 AD
    • visible
    • X-rays
    • multiple wavelength view
  • Gamma ray burst
    • simulation video
• Lecture 30: White dwarfs and neutron stars. Degeneracy pressure. Notes 30 pdf.
  • Sirius B and Sirius A image
• Lecture 31: Neutron stars and pulsars. Notes 31 pdf.

Week 12

• Lecture 32: Exotic properties of compact massive object. Black holes. Notes 32 pdf.
  • stars motion movie near our galaxy center around potential black hole
  • scientific paper pdf “Measuring distance and properties of the Milky Way’s central super massive black hole with stellar orbits”.

• Lecture 33: Equivalence principle as road to General relativity. Time dilation and light gravitational bending. Notes 33 pdf.

• Lecture 34: General relativity and Schwarzschild metric. Gravitational lensing. Notes 34 pdf.
  • Extra topic: Gravitational waves by Hunter.
  • Gravitational lensing samples and classical analog
    • sample 1
    • sample 2
    • Smiling lens
    • GL and classical analog
  • Physics of interstellar black hole images movie and reality
  • GL with and without Doppler shift
  • Gravitational waves
    • Timing Measurements of the Relativistic Binary Pulsar PSR B1913+16 indirect prove for gravitational waves
    • merging black holes GW sources movies
    • Detector LIGO

Week 13

• Lecture 35: The Milky Way galaxy. Flat rotation curve. Notes 35 pdf.
  • The Milky Way views from the Earth
    • 1st
    • 2nd
    • The Milky way in infrared
    • The Milky Way top view
    • The Milky Way 9 billion pixels image zoomable
  • Galaxies classification
    • Hubble classification
      • tuning fork
      • A more detailed chart
      • Short gallery
        • edge on galaxy NGC 891
        • Spiral the Andromeda galaxy
        • Spiral the Andromeda galaxy
        • Spiral the Somrero hat galaxy
        • Spiral the Whirpool galaxy
        • Elliptical and spiral
        • The Fornax Cluster of Galaxies
    • Galaxy interaction
      • Magellanic steam
        • image
        • simulation
      • colliding galaxy NGC 520
        • The Sagittarius Dwarf Tidal Stream
        • The Cartwheel galaxy
      • Polar-ring galaxies
        • NGC 4650A
        • NGC 660
      • Tidal Tail galaxies
        • the Tadpole galaxy
        • The Antennae (NGC 4038 and NGC 4039) zoomed out, zoomed in
      • Star burst galaxy M82 or the Cigar galaxy
    • Early galaxies with the Hubble Ultra deep Field (a lot of odd shaped one)
      • general description
      • gallery
• Presentations:
  • Quasars
  • UFOs
  • Landing sites selection for Mars rovers
• Lecture 39: Finite size of universe. Big Bang. Cosmic background radiation. Notes 39 pdf.
  • Hubble paper with velocity to distance relationship estimate, see the equivalent of the Fig. 27.7 from the book. Looks like Hubble was factor of 10 off. Also, y-axis units are wrong, it should be km/s.
  • CMB maps
  • Nobel prise 2011 The Accelerating Universe. Discrepancy between red-shift based and luminocity estimated distances pdf with data and explanation page containing this link.

HW 01

• assigned reading Chapters 1 and 6.
• HW 01. Due day Friday Jan 29 at 1 pm.

HW 02

• assigned reading Chapters 6 and 2.
• HW 02. Due day Friday Feb 05.

HW 03

• assigned reading Chapters 2 and 7.
• HW 03. Due day Friday Feb 12.

HW

• Get ready to the midterm. You can have one page of equation with you.

HW 04

• assigned reading Chapters 7 and 3.
• HW 04. Due day Friday Feb 26.

HW 06

• assigned reading Chapters 5, 8 and 9.
• HW 06. Due day Monday March 14.

HW 07

• assigned reading Chapters 9.
• HW 07. Due day Friday March 18.

HW 08

• assigned reading Chapters 10 and 11.
• HW 08. Due day Friday March 25.

HW 09

• assigned reading Chapters 12 and 14.
• Get ready for the midterm

HW 10

• assigned reading Chapter 12.
• HW 10. Due day Friday April 8.

HW 11

• assigned reading Chapters 13, 15, and 16.

• HW 11. Due day Friday April 15.

HW 12

• assigned reading Chapters 16 and 17.

• HW 12. Due day Wednesday April 22.

HW 13

• assigned reading Chapters 24, 25 and 26.

• HW 13. Due day Friday April 29.

Additional presentation topics

• UFO by Jeffrey
• Active galactic nuclei - quasars by Jacob
• Plasma and solar wind by Mathew
• Why space travel is hard by Will
• Solar neutrino problem
• Gravitational waves
• Black holes and holographic principle
• Universe Inflation
• Cosmic rays and how they are detected
• A topic of your choice with approval of the instructor