ASTR 691 -- Fall 2022

Syllabus and other docs
PSets and solutions
Lecture notes
Relevant Readings
Exams & Review Paper

Syllabus

Syllabus (PDF)
Office hours: These will be in MAL 2058D on Mondays (1430-1530) and Tuesdays (1400-1500).

PSets and solutions

No.	Topics	Pset	Due	Solutions
0	Survey	PSet 0	Wednesday, Aug 24	N/A
1	Energy, Luminosity, and Flux	PSet 1	Friday, Sep 2	Solutions
2	Radiation and Absorption	PSet 2	Wednesday, Sep 14	Solutions
3	Radiative Transfer	PSet 3	Wednesday, Sep 21	Solutions
4	Radiative Transfer and Transitions	PSet 4	Friday, Sep 30	Solutions
5	Mid-semester check-in	PSet 5	Friday, Oct 14
6	Interiors	PSet 6	Friday, Oct 21	Solutions
7	Stellar Photospheres	PSet 7	Wednesday, Nov 2
8	Temperatures and Albedos	PSet 8	Wednesday, Nov 16

Course Outline

No.	Date	Topic	Readings, Slides, and Notes
1 - W1L1	2022/08/22	Introduction to A691.	Lecture Slides Seager, Sec. 2.1-2.5 Rybicki & Lightman, Sec. 1.1-1.3
2 - W1L2	2022/08/24	Radiation & Blackbodies	Seager, Sec. 2.6-2.8 Rybicki & Lightman, Sec. 1.5
3 - W1L3	2022/08/26	Flux, Luminosity, & Worked Examples
	2022/08/29	Lecture Cancelled
4 - W2L1	2022/08/31	Opacity, extinction, cross-sections, and optical depth	Heng, Sec. 2.2 & 2.2.1 Rybicki, Sec. 1.4a Seager, Sec 5.1-5.3 Virtual Planet Lab cross-section files
5 - W2L2	2022/09/02	Extinction Coefficients, continued	(same as above)
6 - W3L1	2022/09/07	Radiative Transfer Equation: absorption only	Heng, Sec. 2.3.2, 4.1-4.1 Rybicki, Sec. 1.4b
7 - W3L2	2022/09/09	Radiative Transfer Equation: emission only	Seager, Sec. 5.2.3 Rybicki, Sec. 1.4a, 1.4c
8 - W4L1	2022/09/12	Radiative Transfer Equation: general form & Solutions	Seager, Sec. 5.6 Rybicki, Sec. 1.4c Heng, Sec. 2.3-2.5
9 - W4L2	2022/09/14	Applied Radiative Transfer	Sample calculation of a toy, one-layer, stellar atmosphere
10 - W4L3	2022/09/16	Energy Levels and Transitions	Seager, Sec. 8.1, 8.2.0
11 - W5L1	2022/09/19	Atomic Transitions	Seager, Sec. 8.2.1 Vega-like stellar spectrum
12 - W5L2	2022/09/21	Molecular Transitions	Seager, Sec. 8.2.2
13 - W5L3	2022/09/23	Presentations
14 - W6L1	2022/09/26	Transition Rates (Einstein As and Bs)	Rybicki, Sec. 1.6 Jura "Radiation," Lecture 1 (2nd half)
15 - W6L2	2022/09/28	Midterm Review
16 - W6L3	2022/09/30	Presentation & Midterm Review
17 - W7L1	2022/10/03	Stellar Interiors and Structure	Crossfield, Chapter 15
18 - W7L2	2022/10/05	Midterm 1	Formula & Constants
19 - W7L3	2022/10/07	Stellar Interiors and Structure, continued	Crossfield, Chapter 15
20 - W8L1	2022/10/12	Stellar Interiors and Structure, concluded	Crossfield, Chapter 15 Solar model plots Standard solar model (Guenther et al. 1992)
21 - W8L2	2022/10/14	Stellar Atmospheres: Plane-parallel atmosphere	Jura Radiation, Lecture 14
22 - W9L1	2022/10/17	Stellar Atmospheres: Eddington Approximation	Jura Radiation, Lecture 14
23 - W9L2	2022/10/19	Stellar Atmospheres: Limb Darkening	Limb darkening pictures Knutson et al. (2007): Limb Darkening from exoplanet transits
24 - W9L3	2022/10/21	Stellar Atmospheres: Limb Darkening, cont'd
25 - W10L1	2022/10/24	Limb Darkening and Transits
26 - W10L2	2022/10/26	Stellar Chromospheres	Linksy, Chromospheres review, Sec. 1-2 Jura, Stellar Chromospheres, Lecture 8. Crossfield lecture slides
27 - W11L1	2022/10/31	Temperatures and Energy Balance	Seager, Chapter 3, Temperatures and Albedos Crossfield lecture slides
28 - W11L2	2022/10/31	Albedos	Seager, Chapter 3, Temperatures and Albedos Crossfield lecture slides
29 - W11L3	2022/11/02	Talks
30 - W12L1	2022/11/07	Temperature Profiles	Seager, Sec. 9.3
31 - W12L2	2022/11/09	Transmission Spectroscopy
32 - W12L3	2022/11/11	Talks
33 - W13L1	2022/11/14	Convection	Seager, Sec. 9.5 lecture slides
34 - W13L2	2022/11/16	Adiabats	Seager et al., Sec. 9.7 graphic
35 - W13L3	2022/11/18	Talks
36 - W14L1	2022/11/21	A Simple Greenhouse Model	Seager et al., Sec. 9.4 graphic
37 - W15L1	2022/11/28	Basic Atmospheric Circulation	Seager, Chapter 10 lecture slides
38 - W15L2	2022/11/30	Phase Curves
39 - W15L3	2022/12/02	Talks
40 - W16L1	2022/12/05	Global Temperatures
41 - W16L2	2022/12/07	Review
FINAL EXAM	2022/12/14, from 0730-1000

External Readings

Order-of-magnitude approximations (courtesy of Ned Wright).
Astrophysics for Physicists (PDF) (by Choudhuri)
... and more to come, as the semester progresses.
Physics and Astronomy Alumni Career Day: flyer here (Sep 17, all day online)

Exams and Projects

Midterms:

There will be two in-class exams during the semester. The first will be on Wednesday, October 5; the second's date is TBD.

Final:

A comprehensive final exam will be taken on Wednesday, 14 December from 0730-1000.

Talk review:

You will turn in a one-page, double-spaced summary, review, and/or description of a professional astronomy talk. This could be a department colloquium, a department Astro-Space seminar, or a talk delivered through some other forum. This should not just be bullet points jotted down during the lecture, but rather should be a coherent narrative describing what was talked about and why it was important. Due on or before the last day of class.

Journal Club:

You will give a 10-minute presentation ("slideshow") to the class briefly summarizing an astronomy paper of your choice that was posted on arXiv during the semester.

Presentation Rubric:

The rubric that will be used for evaluating these presentations is online here.

Schedule:

Date	Presenters	Paper/topic
2022/09/16	Rachel Cionitti	Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field: paper and presentation
2022/09/23	Keaton Donaghue Joseph Hand Kate Wienke	On the thermal structure of the proto-Super Star Cluster 13 in NGC 253 paper and presentation GPI 2.0: Characterizing Self-Luminous Exoplanets Through Low-Resolution Infrared Spectroscopy: paper and presentation Revisiting the Iconic Spitzer Phase Curve of 55 Cancri e: Hotter Dayside, Cooler Nightside and Smaller Phase Offset: paper and presentation.
2022/09/30	Camden Ruckman	Atmospheric characterization of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-33b: Detection of Ti and V emission lines and retrieval of a broadened line profile: paper and presentation.
2022/10/14
2022/10/21	Anika Goel Suyash Sakhar	Sun-like star orbiting a black hole: paper and presentation. Lyman-alpha Emitters in Ionized Bubbles: Constraining Environment and Ionized Fraction: paper and presentation
2022/10/28	Julia Wright Heidi Chavez Dimitri Schmitz	Towards a non-Gaussian Generative Model of large-scale Reionization Maps: paper and presentation Evaporation before disruption: comparing timescales for Jovian planets in star-forming regions: paper and presentation presentation
2022/11/04	Byron Morales Andrew Merritt Ryan Cosgrove	Blue Monsters. Why are JWST super-early, massive galaxies so blue?: paper and presentation The Galactic Underworld: The spatial distribution of compact remnants: paper and presentation Density, not radius, separates rocky and water-rich small planets orbiting M dwarf stars: paper and presentation
2022/11/11	Caden Kennedy Autumn Rowan
2022/11/18	Tom Huynh Kiet Tran	Quantifying the evidence against a mass gap between black holes and neutron stars: paper and presentation Search for Astrophysical Neutrinos from 1FLE Blazars with IceCube: paper and presentation
2022/12/02	Jess Miears Wesley Sportsman Anja Prandtner	Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter Simulations Using PopSyCLE: paper

BONUS: Fellowship Application

An additional 10% of course grade (i.e., a full letter grade) is available to any student who writes a quality, submittable application for a major scholarship or fellowship (e.g. NSF GRFP, Goldwater, etc.). The application must be submitted to Prof. Crossfield at least one week before the official submission deadline (so he can give you feedback to help improve it). Drafts for fellowships due after the last day of class must be turned in one week before the last day of class. A large list of such fellowships is available at the KU Fellowships website.