Winter 2005, University of Washington

E-mail Zeljko: ivezicATastro.washington.edu

Class materials:

Syllabus (schedule, homework and paper assignments)

Errata in Binney and Tremaine "Galactic Dynamics"

The midterm exam.

Selected Problems for the Final Exam

Binney's notes on Solar System dynamics (postscript)

Lecture notes:

"I must confess that the lectures of these men netted me no perceptible gain. It was obvious that Helmholtz never prepared his lectures properly... Kirchhoff was the very opposite... but it would sound like a memorized text, dry and monotonous."

Max Planck (Scientific Autobiography and other Papers, p. 15, Williams & Nolgate, London, 1950)

Lecture 1: The Observational Overview (with emphasis on the Milky Way, and SDSS)

Lecture 2: Potential Theory I (spherical systems and potential--density pairs)

Lecture 3: Potential Theory II (multipole expansion and disk potentials)

Lecture 4: Potential Theory III (the Milky Way potential and numerical methods)

Lecture 5: The Orbits of Stars (static spherical potentials)

Lecture 6: The Orbits of Stars (axisymmetric potentials)

Lecture 7: The Collisionless Boltzmann Equation

Lecture 8: The Jeans Equations

Lecture 9: Applications of the Jeans Equations, the Virial Theorem

Lecture 10: More about the Virial Theorem

Lecture 11: The Isothermal Sphere and Slab, King Models, the Jeans Instability

Lecture 12: Disk Dynamics, Spiral Arms and Bars: Introduction

Lecture 13: Disk Dynamics: Spiral Arms and Bars as Instabilities

Lecture 14: Collisions I - Tidal Tails, Dynamical Friction

Lecture 15: Collisions II - Scattering of Disk Stars

Lecture 16: The Gravothermal Catastrophy, the Fokker-Planck Approximation

Some interesting class-related links/materials: