Lecture Notes
Lecture notes (outlines) will be provided here prior to each class day. Updates will be ongoing. I will try to stay approximately 1 week ahead of schedule. As described in the syllabus, these lecture notes are meant as an outline of what I intend to cover. They are not a substitute for attending the lectures.
They are provided as a study guide for quizzes and the final, for reference on the homeworks, and as a tool for following the lectures during class. Many students find it useful to print the lecture notes ahead of time and then take notes in the margins during classtime.
Note that the notes listed below are continuously updated until about 2-4 days before class. I will be making additions and deletions as I work to improve the course.
No class dates: No Class Monday Sept 1 (Labor Day); No Class Nov 26-28 (Thanksgiving).
Quiz Dates: Quiz 1 Friday Sept 26; Quiz 2 Friday Oct 31; Quiz 3 Friday Dec 5
Final Exam: Weds Dec 17 at 12:00pm
UNIT 1: The Long Copernican Revolution:
Week 1:
1 : Introduction to 1101: Planets to Cosmos
2 : Motions in the Heavens
Week 2:
3 : Measuring Earth and Sky: Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, and Ptolemy
4 : Greek Astronomy, the Harmony of the Spheres, and Heliocentrism
Week 3:
5 : Copernicus
6 : Tycho and Kepler
7 : Galileo
Week 4:
8 : Newtonian Revolution
9 : Gravity and Orbits
10 : The Family of the Sun and the Dance of the Planets
Week 5:
11 : Discovery of Exoplanets
12 : Properties of Exoplanets and The Habitable Zone
Friday, Sept 26 : In-Class Quiz #1; No lecture Study Guide Here
UNIT 2: We Are Star Stuff:
Week 6:
13 : Measuring the Stars I: Temperature and Brightness
14 : Measuring the Stars II: the HR Diagram
15 : Internal Structure of Stars
Week 7:
16 : The Age of the Sun
17 : Energy Generation and Thermal Equilibrium
18 : The Main Sequence
Week 8: (chs. 17, 20, 21)
19 : The Evolution of Low-Mass Stars (ch. 20)
20 : The Evolution of High-Mass Stars (ch. 20)
22 : Supernovae (ch. 21)
Week 9:
23 : Neutron Stars & White Dwarfs (ch. 22);
24 : Black Holes (ch 22)
25 : Tests of Stellar Evolution (ch 20)
Week 10:
26 : Star Formation (ch. 19)
27 : Planet Formation and Nucleosynthesis: We Are Star Stuff
Friday, Oct 18 In-Class Quiz #2; No Lecture Study Guide Here
UNIT 3: The Universe:
Week 11: Slides are here for whole week: color and in black and white
27 : Island Universes and the Discovery of Galaxies
28 : Cosmic Distances, The Great Debate
29 : Structure of galaxies
Week 12:
Monday: More on galaxies. See above.
Wednesday: Special Relativity and General Relativity PDF slides: color, black and white
Friday: Einstein's Universe: Isotropy and Homogeneity PDF slides: color, black and white
Week 13:
Monday: The Expanding Universe: Hubble's Law and Cosmic Distances
Wednesday: The Big Bang
Lecture notes for Mon. and Weds. here: PDF slides: color, black and white
Friday: Tests of The Big Bang PDF slides: color, black and white
Dark Matter and Dark Energy PDF slides: color, black and white
Week 14:
Dark Matter and Dark Energy Slides immediately above.
Week 15:
Monday: The first 3 minutes PDF slides: color, black and white
Wednesday: The Fate of the Universe
Friday, Dec 5: In-Class Quiz #3; No Lecture ; Study Guide Here
Week 16:
Monday, Dec 8: Life in the Universe