Astronomy 101

Sections AB & AD with Phil Rosenfield

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Office Hours

Section Syllabus

Meeting times:
AB: TTh 8:30-9:20
AD: TTH 9:30-10:20

Meeting location:
T: PAA 210
Th: PAA 216

Announcements

06-01-08
Here's a nice way to learn about the Drake equation

05-23-08
I've got a solution set to the HR lab we did. (Chase: I edited the text to update the error you found too), also grades are posted again, and your readings were interesting. Have a nice 3 day weekend!

05-14-08

Nova Science Now! Has a really cool program on the center of the milky way and how Sag A* was found.
Monster of the Milky Way

05-13-08

The powerpoint presentation on stellar evolution: here [pdf].

Midterm Exams!

Have a look at the gradebook for totals. Check out your multiple choice answers here [pdf].

05-11-08

Just a reminder, I'm going to talk about stellar evolution in office hours on Monday from 3-4 in PAA 216. I'm also getting distracted from my work and thought some might enjoy this, it's a bit more description of a supernova remnant than just a pretty picture:

Can't help it - here's one more. Check em all out here

05-07-08

In class today we saw proplyds (proto planetary disks) in the Orion nebula, here is a visualization from the San Diego Super Computing center and the American Museum of Natural History, for details about how accurate this is, go here.

There were also a couple questions today about the fate of Earth when the Sun goes Red Giant, scroll down and check out that article, I'll count it for a reading grade.

05-05-08

The molecular cloud collapsing animations can be found here. These calculations show brown dwarf stars being formed and then ejected from the star cluster. Not exactly as it was presented in class, but the same sorts of things are expected for all stars forming, just fewer and fewer objects of higher and higher mass. You're looking at red = low density; white = high density:

In my office hours today from 3-4, I'll go over the HR diagram and how we know what we know about stars from it.

05-04-08
The tests are looking good, I'm in the middle of finished grading question 6. Thought I'd take a break to show you this:

"Life on Earth should thrive for hundreds of millions more years. But wait till the oceans start boiling...."

This is another really great article about the fate of Earth while our Sun changes into a Red Giant and so on, even mentions what may happen when the Andromeda Galaxy collides with the Milky Way and universal expansion really takes over.

Download the pdf here