Syllabus and schedule
Psets and solutions
Lecture Notes
| No.
| Date
| Topic and notes link
|
| 1
| 2019/02/06
| Intro to astro; magnitudes; order of magnitude.
|
| 2
| 2019/02/08
| The two-body problem; Kepler's laws.
|
| 3
| 2019/02/11
| The two-body problem, concluded.
|
| 4
| 2019/02/13
| Binaries
|
| 5
| 2019/02/15
| Gravitational Waves
|
| 6
| 2019/02/19
(Mon.=holiday!)
| Electromagnetic Radiation
|
| 7
| 2019/02/20
| Radiative transfer
|
| 8
| 2019/02/22
| Stellar spectra
|
| 9
| 2019/02/25
| Stellar atmospheres
|
| 10
| 2019/02/27
| Atmospheres, opacity sources
|
| 11
| 2019/03/01
| Stellar timescales
|
| 12
| 2019/03/04
| Stellar structure
|
| 13
| 2019/03/06
| Structure, continued
|
| 14
| 2019/03/08
| Structure, concluded
|
| 15
| 2019/03/11
| Stability and Convection
|
| 16
| 2019/03/13
| Polytropes
|
| 17
| 2019/03/15
| Nucleosynthesis
|
| 18
| 2019/03/18
| Nucleosynthesis, continued
|
| 19
| 2019/03/20
| Nucleosynthesis, concluded. Plus mini midterm-review
|
| | Spring Break |
| 20
| 2019/04/01
| Degeneracy pressure
|
| 21
| 2019/04/03
| Schematic stellar evolution
|
| 22
| 2019/04/05
| Schematic evolution, continued.
|
| 23
| 2019/04/08
| Observational stellar evolution.
|
| 24
| 2019/04/10
|
|
| 25
| 2019/04/12
| Observational stellar evolution.
|
| 26
| 2019/04/17
| Compact Objects: white dwarfs revisited.
|
| 27
| 2019/04/19
| Compact Objects: neutron stars.
|
| 28
| 2019/04/22
| Compact Objects: NS and black holes.
|
| 29
| 2019/04/24
| Black holes, Lagrange points, and Roche Lobes
|
| 30
| 2019/04/26
| Accretion Disks
|
| 31
| 2019/04/29
| Fluid mechanics; shocks
|
| 32
| 2019/05/01
| Shocks, blast waves
|
| 33
| 2019/05/03
| Blast waves, fluid instabilities
|
| 34
| 2019/05/06
| Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
|
| 35
| 2019/05/08
| The ISM and Plasma
|
| 36
| 2019/05/10
| Dispersion & rotation measure; Exoplanets I.
|
| 37
| 2019/05/13
| Exoplanets II.
|
|
| 2019/05/15
| No class
|
Course Readings
Exams & Review Paper
Midterm:
Wednesday, March 20, 1700-1900, in room 3-442.
15% of grade. The in-class exam will be closed-book and
closed-notes.
Solutions to the midterm.
Final:
Comprehensive, take home. 20% of grade. Will be
distributed on the last day of class,
May 13. Due by 11:59pm
on
May 22. You may consult external digital and written
references.
Review Paper
Work on the review paper will comprise 15% of the total course
grade. Just as when writing a professional review article, there
will be a series of checkpoints to ensure everything stays on
track. The grade weight of these checkpoints follows a geometric
progression, as detailed below.
Before starting, it's worth taking a look at past review
articles -- the best place for this is
the Annual
Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics. They also give guidance
on review paper preparation, though it goes into a bit too much
detail for our purposes; nonetheless their
a finely detailed
checklist outlines the various components of a review article
-- although not all of this applies to our assignment.
Submissions in PDF, LibreOffice ODT, or other free/libre
formats will receive full credit. Submissions in Apple Pages, MS
Word, or other non-free formats will not.
Paper checkpoints:
- Topic. Choose a relevant topic and submit it to the
instructor for approval no later than the end of February. (1%
of grade.)
- Outline. Submit a one-page outline for your paper by the
end of March. (2% of grade).
- Draft. Submit a substantially complete draft by
the end of April. (4% of grade).
- Final paper. Submit the completed paper on May 10. (8% of grade).
The rubric used for grading the final paper is online here.