Final Exam Schedule for Astronomy 1000:

Exams will be primarily multiple-choice questions with a few true/false questions.

Pop-quizes will consist of 10 True/False questions all based on the previous lecture. It turns out that CLICKERS might not work reliably in a class of our size. So we will *NOT* be using CLICKERS in this class. Instead, we will be using Scantrons to take pop-quizes and exams.

You must buy ~12 ParScore Scantrons at the campus Bookstore and bring them to class with you. Repeat: you must buy ~12 scantrons and bring them to class. Your pop-quizes will require them.

Lecture-1: This lecture serves as an introduction to the class. I will provide an overview of the topics covered in this class, go over the grading system (e.g., exams, pop-quizes, final, and extra-credit essays), and show the student where to find copies of the syllabus. At the end I briefly discuss what Science is (and isn't).

This lecture covers material from Chapter 1.1-1.2 in the text.

notes for Lecture 1 (Introduction)>Lecture-1 Notes

Here is the computer simulation showing two Milky Way-like galaxies merging over roughly 1-billion years due to gravity. The yellow dots represent stars and the blue dots represent clouds of gas, mainly hydrogen, all following bound orbits due to the gravitational tug of all the other stars and gas clouds. In other words, we have two model galaxies that are subject to all the laws of physics as we currently understand them, and we can study their evolution (and merger!). Computer models like this help us understand how galaxies are structured, as well as how they are born and (in this case) change dramatically. Computational astronomy is a very important branch of modern astronomy. If you like computers you might consider a career in computational physics or astronomy. >Spiral_Merger

Lecture-2: In this lecture we discuss the objects visible to the unaided eye in the night-sky, and explain why they appear to move from night to night and month to month. We also see how seasons result from the tilted rotational axis of the Earth.

This lecture covers material from Chapter 1.2-1.6 and 2.2, 2.3 in your text.

notes for Lecture 2 (The Night Sky)>Lecture-2 Notes

Here is an animation that illustrates how lunar phases come about. Try to keep in mind that the one half of the moon is always illuminated by the Sun, and it always points towards the Sun.>Lunar-Phases

Here is an animation that tries to show a solar eclipse from the point of view of someone floating in space looking down towards the Earth. Note that there are in fact *two* shaddows cast by the moon - a large shaddow, and at the very center, a small darker shaddow. Where would you have to be to see a *total* eclipse? A *partial* eclipse?>Solar-Eclipse

An animation of a total solar eclipse. Notice how long it takes for the moon to pass completely from one side of the Sun to another. When the Sun's disk is completely covered by the moonn, note that the Sun's "corona" becomes suddenly visible.>Solar-Eclipse2

Lecture-3: In this lecture we begin our exploration of the Universe with our home planet, Earth, including its internal structure and atmosphere. But before we start there is a brief overview of the entire Solar System to set the stage for the next few weeks.

This lecture covers Chapter 6.1-6.4 and 7.1-7.5.

notes for Lecture 3 (Earth)>Lecture-3 Notes

Here is a computer simulation showing how geologists think Earth's continents have moved over the past 300-million years (i.e., continental drift). Notice that 300-million years ago all the continents were joined into a "Super Continent" called Pangea>Continental Drift

Here's an interesting video showing underwater thermal vents where crustal plates move apart>Underwater Smokers

Lecture-4:We finally jump off the Earth to visit the planets Mercury and Venus. Both planets are very different from the Earth. Mercury turns out to be much like Earth's moon. Venus at first glance is Earth's twin. But it is in fact more like Earth's evil twin "Skippy". Can we understand physically why both are so different from the Earth, especially Venus?

Notes for Lecture 4 (Mercury & Venus)>Lecture-4 Notes

Here is a nice GIF showing the surface features on Venus' surface as revealed by Magellan's radar. The black areas are the regions note surveyed by Magellan (Terra Incognita)>Venus Radar

Here are a couple of JPEG files showing additional evidence for volcanic activity on Venus:

radar images of lava flows taken by Magellan in 1995>Lava-Flows

radar image of a lava dome, a giant volcanic "sink hole". Note the diameter of these structures as indicated by the scale-bar>Lava-Dome

Lecture-5: This lecture concerns the planet Mars. We will examine the basic properties of this planet - surface features, atmosphere, and likely interior structure, and attempt to understand how it may have transitioned from a fairly warm planet with oceans and thick atmosphere to the extremely dry and cold planet it is today. We will also briefly examine the prospects for life on Mars, if only in the distant past.

This lecture covers material from Chapter 10.

Notes for Lecture 5 (Mars)>Lecture-5 Notes

Here is a computer simulation showing how a team at Caltech (M. Marinova) explain the large difference between the Northern & Southern hemispheres of the planet. In a nutshell, 3-billion years ago a solar system body ~1/2 to 2/3 the mass of our Moon hit Mars with a glancing blow, ripping off the planet's crust over the northern half, and leaving behind a relatively smooth "crust" made of the mantle (the collider itself was destroyed in their computer simulations).>Mars Collision

Here is a link to You-Boob where some amazing movies of Martian ``Dust Devils'' driven by strong winds. Some of these mini-tornadoes are large enough to be seen from orbit. You can see perhaps while climatologists like to have another planet to play with!>Dust Devils on Mars

Here's a movie taken from the surface of Mars showing clouds drifting across the skies of the Red planet. It's my understanding that these clouds are largely frozen CO2, not water as the case on Earth (but I'll check). >Martian Clouds

Lecuture-6: This material actually covers two lectures, with one of them coming after Exam #1. Both are on Jupiter, the "king" of the planets. We will see that Jupiter is unlike any of the planets we have studied so far. Jupiter it turns out represents a kind of solar system in minature, which is one of the reasons it attracts so much attention from astronomers.

For those of you following along in the textbook, this is contained in Chapter 11,

notes for Lecture 6 (Jupiter)>Lecture-6 Notes

Here is a time-lapse movie of Jupiter showing some of the complex motions in its upper-atmosphere. Note the zones (light colored) and belts (darker color), the direction reversals, the rotation of the Great Red Spot and the smaller storms (white spots). Quite a lot of stuff going on here.>Jupiter-Movie1

Here's another time-lapse movie showing Jupiter's rapid rotation (can you estimate this movie's duration?) as well as the orbital motions of two of Jupiter's large "Galilean Moons". Note that they cast shaddows on Jupiter's upper cloud-tops (solar eclipses!).>Jupiter-Movie2

Here is a photo from Jupiter's night-side taken by the Galileo mission showing the inner-most bit of its faint ring system scattering sunlight.>Jupiter Ring

Here is another beautiful image from the Galileo mission showing the volcanic moon Io "occulting" Jupiter. Note the shaddow cast by the moon on the cloud-tops (a solar eclipse!).>Jupiter & Io

And another beautiful image. Here the Galileo mission has captured Io (the volcanic moon) and Europa (deep water ocean under ice crust?) in the same frame. Volcanic activity is evident on Io. Why is it that you can see surface features on Io's night-side?>Europa & Io

What a photogenic planet Jupiter is! Here's an image showing details in the Great Red Spot and its environment, including a new kid on the block - "Red Spot Jr.", which was formed by the merger of 3-4 smaller "white spots" (two of which are visible) that abruptly turned red over a 1-month period.>Red & Red Jr.

Here is a movie of Jupiter's inner-ring made by Voyager in the late-1970's showing the presence of two small moons within. This ring is hard to see (unlike Saturn's ring) because (a) it is made of very small dust-mote sized bits of rock that is (b) not coated with ice (i.e., not very reflective). There's also less material in this ring than Saturn's.>Jupiter Ring movie

Lecture-7: Jupiter (part 2). In this lecture we mainly consider the Moons of Jupiter, which are as fascinating as the big guy himself. We'll see that the four largest moons - known as the Galilean Moons after their discoverer (or maybe not!) Galileo - two may have vast oceans of liquid water under thin ice crusts (and maybe life?) while another is host to active volcanoes. This and more in Lecture-7.

notes for Lecture 7 (Jupiter continued)>Lecture-7 Notes

Lecture-8: The planet Saturn. We will compare it with Jupiter, and describe what we know about its interior structure and composition before examining its remarkable ring system. This will allow us to introduce the concept of the "Roche Limit", setting up a seque back to Jupiter to see how massive planets have saved life on Earth!

For textbook fans, Saturn is covered in Chapter 12.

notes for Lecture 8 (Saturn)>Lecture-8 Notes

Here is a movie of Saturn's rings made by Voyager in the 1980's showing the mysterious "Spokes". Their origin is still not fully understood: they appear to be seasonal (i.e., depending on Saturn's position in its orbit around the sun) and there are suggestions they may be related to lightning discharges on Saturn itself. They appear to be composed of dust particles with minimal ice coating.>Spoke-movie

Here is wide field image taken by the Cassini Orbiter in 2004 from the night-side of Saturn showing another view of Saturn's rings. Note that the ring system is considerably more extensive. Compare with the rings of Jupiter taken from a similar position by the Galileo mission.>Saturn's Rings (wide angle)

Another beautiful image of Saturn captured by the Cassini orbiter. This angle shows the A, B, & C-rings both casting shaddows on Saturn and vice versa.>Saturn's Rings and Shaddows

A black-and-white image from Cassini that is no less spectacular, showing a much-inclined A, B, & C-rings plus four of Saturn's moons (can you tell which ones?).>Rings plus 4-moons.

Lecture-9: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. We will meet the remaining two Jupiter-like planets and a new class of objects: Dwarf Planets, led by the prototype: Pluto.

This material corresponds to Chap. 13 & 14.3

notes for Lecture 9 (Uranus, Neptune & Pluto)>Lecture-9 Notes

Lecture-10: Asteroids and Comets turn out to be left-overs from the era of planet formation. Their study should uncover clues about how our Solar System (and others) formed. We'll also see that one asteroid or comet can ruin your day completely. Just ask a dinosaur (as in Jurasic Park, not me...).

notes for Lecture 10 (Space Junk)>Lecture-10 Notes

Oops. Here are the slides dealing with Asteroids that were accidently missing from the original posting of Lecture 10 notes. You can either re-download the corrected Lecture-10 Notes in the above link or you can just add the following 12-pages to the earlier set. Sorry about that!

notes on Asteroids from Original Lecture 10:>Asteroid Notes

Lecture-11: The Formation of the Solar System. We have learned a lot of facts about the bodies making up the Solar System. However science is not simply a bunch of facts. Science tries to find patterns in facts that can explain for those facts and all the others, i.e., we try to create theories to organize knowledge and explain what we see. So that's what we're going to talk about in this lecture.

notes for Lecture 11 (The Formation of the Solar System)>Lecture-11 Notes

Lecture-12: The Search for Extra-Solar Planets. The previous lecture argued that planets form as a consequence of star formation. This implies that planetary systems should be extremely common (recall there are ~200-billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone). Have we in fact discovered planets orbiting other stars? Are there other Solar Systems out there? In this lecture we touch on the topic of Extra-Solar Planets (or "Xplanets"). We will see that there are techniques that detect planets orbiting other stars both directly and indirectly. We will see that the XSolar Systems discovered so far do not resemble ours at all. Is this because our Solar System is unusual or because of subtle selection effects of our detection techniques? We shall see.

notes for Lecture 12 (Extra-Solar Planets)>Lecture-12 Notes

Here is a little movie showing how a star can be made to "wobble" due to the orbital motion of a close and massive planet. The wobble of course is the result of the change in the star/planet's center of mass. Note that the "wobble" increases when the planet's mass increases. Star Wobble

One especially sensitive way to detect the "wobble" of a star due to planet(s) is to look for Doppler Shifts in the light emitted by the star. That is, as the star orbits the star/planet center of mass it is alternately traveling towards and away from the Earth. The wavelengths of its absorption lines will shift to bluer then redder wavelengths as a result. Star Wobble Doppler Shifts

Kepler will try to find planets using the "Planetary Transit" technique, illustrated in this movie. A planet passing in front of a star will block a tiny amount of light from the star, making it slightly fainter. If you can monitor the brightness of a star accurately enough (and Kepler will) you can catch such events. You can also derive in this way the planet's diameter and orbit. Note also that the planet goes through phases as it orbits its parent star. The light from the planet (and the loss of light as it is eclipised by its star) can also be detected. Planetary Transit Light Curve

More Kepler stuff. Kepler is basically a large wide-field imaging telescope in space. It's 42 large-format CCD chips will survey the field shown in this movie, and monitor tiny brightness variations from several hundred-thousand stars that would signal the presence of planets, including Earth-like planets in the Habitible Zone. (HAT-P-7 happens to be a star with a known planet orbiting it. It will be used to test Kepler's ability to detect planets. We saw in class how amazingly better Kepler was able to detect the planet relative to ground-based observations). Keplers Target Field

Lecture-13: Since space is so vast, and even the nearest stars are too far away to travel to in any realistic way, astronomers have become clever in squeezing information out of the Electromagnetic Radiation -i.e., *light* - that is emitted, absorbed, or reflected by asteroids, planets, stars, galaxies, clusters - basically, everything in space. In this lecture we will learn some basic facts about EM radiation and the EM spectrum.

notes for Lecture 13 (EM Radiation)>Lecture-13 Notes

Lecture-14: Telescopes allow astronomers to collect faint EM-radiation from extremely distant objects for interrogation. This allows us to determine luminosities, distances, ages, chemical compositions, and histories. In this lecture we consider modern telescopes and detectors.

notes for Lecture 14 (Optical Telescopes)>Lecture-14 Notes

Twinkle-twinkle little star. That's the problem. Visible light from objects in space (like this star) is greatly affected by the turbulent atmosphere it passes through during the last ~5 km of its journey. This file shows the resulting distortions of the star's image dramtically in a rapid series of short exposures. This is a 2.5-m telescope so the star should have an apparent diameter of 1/20'th of an arcsec. Notice that the blurred star image is 1-2 arcseconds in diameter and moves all over the place.>Star Twinkle

Another example of how looking at distant objects (here the surface of the Moon) is affected by the Earth's turbulent atmosphere. The image is from a video camera attached to the focus of a 1.5-m telescope.>Shake_Moon

Here's one way to solve the problem: Adaptive optics. By using a flexible mirror that can be rapidly re-shaped by a computer you can start to take out the "wavefront curvature" imposed by the turbulent atmosphere. This demonstration is from our friends at the Max Planck Institute. The images are: (bottom-left)-The uncorrected blurred star. (top-left)-The curved wavefronts of the star's light-waves after they have passed through the atmosphere. If not for the atmosphere these would be flat surfaces. (middle)-This represents the shape of the flexible mirror (note how rapidly it has to move!) required to remove the curved wavefronts. (top-right)-This shows the shape of the wavefronts after correction by the flexible mirror (they're much flatter..yay!). (bottom-right)-The resulting image of the star is much smaller and actually reaches the theoretical angular resolution of this 2.5-m telescope. >Working Adaptive Optics System

Study Guides will be posted here before each exam:

Here is a study guide for Exam #1: >StudyGuide-1

Here is a study guide for Exam #2: >StudyGuide-2

Practice Exams will be posted here before each exam:

Here is a short Practice Exam #1: >(Practice Exam-1)

Here is a short Practice Exam #2: >(Practice Exam-2)

Goodluck and I hope you enjoy this class

Prof. James Higdon