Astronomy 150
Sections AA & AC with Phil Rosenfield
Meeting times:
AA:
MW 8:30 - 9:20
AC:
MW 9:30-10:20
Meeting location:
Mon: PAA 216
Wed: PAA 210
Find my office
Phil Rosenfield
philrose at astro.washington.edu
206-543-9039
Announcements
03/12/08
Here's a real life final:
Read this article
Cassini
Gets a Cool Shower From an Ice-Spewing Moon
By KENNETH CHANG
After you read it, can you say astronomy 150 helped
you understand the article? Do you feel you have
enough context to understand why astronomers think
Enceladus is intriguing? If you hone your writing
abilities, do you think you could have written it??
03/12/08
Answer keys! HW8,51 Peg
03/11/08
Cassini Spacecraft to Dive Into Water Plume of Saturn Moon
- Tomorrow!!
Read more here
03/05/08
I put up an updated grade book!
Wanna play with the Drake Equation? Check it out here
Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a bad ass, see for yourself.
03/01/08
I add more submitted questions - and
graded the exam, we'll talk about the exam and do a lab
about extra solar planets on Monday.
02/26/08
Turn your sound on! I took it down - it keeps loading! download the Titan landing video here
Green line: trajectory (remember the moon is spinning)
Bottom left: Surface of Titan, with directions pointing to
the Sun and to Cassini (main space craft)
Bottom right: Green line is camera view (craft is spinning
like crazy)
Signal dies as Cassini sets below the horizon and Huygens
battery dies
02/16/08
Due to the fact that you folks asked
super fantasatic questions, I started a new
page to answer ones I don't think I'll get to in
class.
02/10/08
You wouldn't believe this, I'm
caught up with grading, check the grade book. I'll hand it
all back tomorrow with some comments.
02/07/08
The Ruskies are the only ones who've (successfully) landed on Venus:
Why didn't they need a parachute? (hint, that metal dish IS the parachute)
And here are some awesome Mars links ...
How we got there:
I think NIN actually was playing in the atmosphere of Mars during decent
I first saw this animation at a talk by a JPL engineer. Here are some cool things about it:
1. The rocket is going straight up, it's the Earth spinning underneath it that makes it look like it's arching. (coriolis force)
2. 1:06-1:23: What did they do to make it stop spinning (think of angular momentum) - you better believe those folks took courses like 150 way back when.
3. Notice how it didn't matter which way the lander landed, it would right itself as it opened up.
Where are the rovers today? Can you think of why the rovers paths seem to just go up to a crater and look around?
If you still need to be convinced that science is awesome please watch this video:Victoria Crater Movie
For further evidence of awesomeness:
More Movies here
01/30/08
The lab manual with the reflectance
spectra lab (lab 9) [pdf]
01/29/08
Here's help with geosychronous orbits,
good animations.
And check out Toby's Tutorials:
Gravity
Kepler's
Laws
Impact
Cratering
Tidal
Heating
Comet Tutorial
01/29/08
Studying bring ya down? Try NASA
TV
Here's a good one to start with: STS-120
Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver
01/23/08
For
those who need help understanding
Scientific Notation: Use
this!
01/22/08
Mercury! A side no human has ever seen! Check
it out. Now!
01/19/08
We'll be talking about light on Wed, and next Mon. Here's a (kinda cheesy) video about how we
don't see all there is to see.
If you really
want to learn about light here's where to look
01/15/08
(a more recent) Moon formation movie
The music
isn't nearly as awesome as the video shown in class
Google Moon!
The
Best of SOHO
Sun Movies
01/13/08
Apollo movies
Falling
Down
Collecting
Rocks is hard
01/10/08
On Monday, we'll be learning about the Sun, I read a
really neat article (with lots of themes we are learning about in 150) about the future of the Sun and what that
means for earth. Instead of handing it out (black and white copies of the
illustrations suck) download the pdf here.
From the article:
"Life on Earth should thrive for hundreds of
millions more years. But wait till
the oceans start boiling...."
That's pretty damn cool.
01/07/08
I don't have a section syllabus, so instead here
Homework and Make-ups
All Homework should be turned in directly to me (or my mailbox) by 5:00 on the day it is due. Due dates will be announced in class and on the section website.
Please do your own work! Any cheating, plagiarism, or improper collaboration will be submitted to the Dean's office for an official decision. Simply put: Do not turn in anything that is not from your own mind without giving due credit
No make ups allowed, deadlines are final. Any issues with deadlines must be brought to my attention well in advance of the deadline for any consideration.