syllabus | timetable | projects | homework | clicker questions | weekly summaries | review | images | text |
Week 1 (Aug 23)
Week 2 (Aug 30)
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Emission | Absorption | |
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Week 3 (Sep 6)
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![]() Animation (click on image for movie at original site) |
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![]() © 1996-2001 Wendy Carlos - All Rights Reserved |
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![]() The Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory being refurbished. |
![]() An image of neutrinos from the Sun observed by the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory. |
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![]() Movie of the Sun in soft x-rays, observed by the Yohkoh satellite. |
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![]() Animation (click on image for movie at original site) |
![]() Animation (click on image for movie at original site) |
![]() Animation (click on image for movie at original site) |
Week 4 (Sep 13)
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Famous mnemonic: Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me
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Stereo image illustrating parallax. |
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The HR Diagram
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Week 5 (Sep 20)
Week 6 (Sep 27)
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Supernovae
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Type: | Core collapse supernova | Thermonuclear supernova |
Spectra: | Show H lines | Show no H lines |
Where: | In star-forming regions, spiral arms | Anywhere in a galaxy |
Ž | Young, massive star (> 8 solar masses) | Old white dwarf |
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Core collapse supernova
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Thermonuclear supernova
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Week 7 (Oct 4)
Week 8 (Oct 11)
Fall break. We needed that!
Week 9 (Oct 18)
Special Relativity
Are these boxes the same?
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The rules of 4-dimensional perspective:
An observer moving to the right sees the "celestial sphere" distorted into a "celestial ellipsoid"
with self at the focus of the ellipse.
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Black Holes in General Relativity
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The fish upstream can make way against the current, but the fish downstream is swept to the bottom of the waterfall. |
Week 10 (Oct 25)
Observational evidence for Black Holes
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Week 11 (Nov 1)
History of understanding of our Galaxy, the Milky Way
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way
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![]() 1-4 µm near infrared emission from stars penetrates most interstellar gas. |
![]() 1-5 nm X-ray emission from shock-heated hot gas. Point sources are mostly x-ray binaries. |
![]() 21 cm radio emission from warm diffuse atomic hydrogen gas. |
![]() 2.6 mm radio emission from carbon monoxide reveals cool dense molecular gas. |
![]() Ultra-violet shows hot young stars, in star-forming spiral arms |
![]() 3.6 µm near infrared shows stars distributed throughout the galaxy |
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Week 12 (Nov 8)
Galaxies
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Dark Matter
Substance | Properties | Fraction of the mass-energy of the Universe | Main observational evidence |
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Dark Energy | Gravitationally repulsive. Could be quantum mechanical vacuum energy? | 70% | Hubble diagram of high redshift thermonuclear supernovae. |
Non-baryonic Dark Matter | Heavy, weakly interacting particles not yet discovered in the lab. Maybe will be found by the next particle accelerator (the Large Hadron Collider at CERN)? | 26% | The clustering of Galaxies compared to the Cosmic Microwave Background (see below). |
Baryonic Matter | Atoms. The kind of stuff that you and planets and stars are made of. From Greek baryos = heavy (referring to protons and neutrons). | 4% | The primordial abundances of light elements (H, D, 3He, 4He, Li). |
Neutrinos | Light, weakly interacting particles, that fly freely through the Earth without stopping. | < 1% | Upper limits on neutrino masses. |
Photons | Mostly the Cosmic Microwave Background. | 0.006 % | We see it! |
Total: | 100% | CMB indicates that the Universe is flat (see below). |
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Cosmic Microwave Background
Before Recombination | After Recombination |
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ionized | neutral |
opaque | transparent |
vibrating photon-bayronic fluid | baryons start collapsing into galaxies |
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Week 13 (Nov 22)
Week 14 (Nov 29)
Cosmology
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Geometry: | Closed | Flat | Open |
Spatial curvature: | Positive | Zero | Negative |
Density: | > critical | = critical | < critical |
W: | > 1 | = 1 | < 1 |
(Circumference/radius) of a circle: | < 2p | = 2p | > 2p |
Sum of interior angles of a triangle: | > 180° | = 180° | < 180° |
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Inflation
Remarkably, the theory of Inflation offers a solution to all of these problems.
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Vacuum energy ® Matter + radiation energy |
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Fall 2005 ASTR 1120-001 Homepage
syllabus | timetable | projects | homework | clicker questions | weekly summaries | review | images | text |
Updated 2005 Dec 1