Astronomy 5682: Introduction to Cosmology
Spring 2009
Items handed out in class
As of February 14, the following items have been handed out:
- Course Syllabus
- Problem Set 1, due Tuesday, 1/22.
- Problem Set 2, and associated
figures due Thursday, 1/30.
- Problem Set 3, due Thursday, 2/7.
- Problem Set 4, due Thursday, 2/14.
- Review guide for midterm.
- Midterm and midterm solution set handed out on 2/26.
- Problem Set 5, due Thursday, 3/21.
- Problem Set 6, due Tuesday, 4/2.
Note change of due date.
- Problem Set 7, due Thursday, 4/11.
- Problem Set 8. due Thursday, 4/18.
- Review guide for final and
course evaluation.
Lecture notes
All notes are in pdf format.
Video links:
I will show some of these in class, but I probably won't get to all of them.
-
Flight through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey map of the universe.
-
Flight through structure in the nearby universe.
-
Flight outward through the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.
As we go out to greater distances, we are effectively
looking backward in time. The most distant galaxies here
are about 12 billion light years away.
-
Computer simulation of a merger of two disk galaxies.
The computer is just calculating the effects of gravity
on the initial rotating disks of stars. (I think there is also dark
matter in the simulation, but it isn't shown in the video.)
-
Computer simulation of the gravitational clustering of
dark matter. The expansion of the universe has been
scaled out, so that we are always looking at the same matter.
Rotation helps to see the 3-dimensional structure.
-
Another computer simulation of dark matter clustering.
This time the expansion of the universe hasn't been
scaled out, but the video zooms in to show the formation of
a single dark matter halo.
-
Computer simulation of gravitational clustering of dark matter.
This video shows a 2-dimensional projection of a 3-dimensional
simulation, much larger in volume than the previous two.
The expansion of the universe has again been
scaled out.
-
Another computer simulation with a 3-dimensional view.
This one uses an approximate technique that I developed in my PhD thesis!
(But I didn't do this simulation.)
-
Computer simulation of the formation of a disk galaxy.
In addition to gravity, there are pressure forces on the
gas, and it is the combination of gravity, rotation,
these pressure forces, and dissipation of energy that
leads to the formation of a thin disk.
-
Flight through the large scale distribution of dark matter
in a computer simulation.
-
Another simulation of a galaxy merger, but this one stops
at several points to compare to images of observed merging galaxies.
Go to David Weinberg's Home Page
Updated: 2013 April 8[dhw]