AST 312: Observational Astronomy

General Info:

Meeting Times: Tuesday 8:00 - 9:50 PM
Meeting Place: BMPS 1420 (also MSU Planetarium and Observatory for some classes)
Contact info and office hours are at the bottom of the page.

Click for East Lansing, Michigan Forecast

News:

April 24 2003

Your raw scores are here. These are all of the scores except for the final quiz, which has not been added in yet. These are not your final grades, just the raw scores. They are posted by the last 4 digits of your student number.

April 23 2003

Tonight will be the last observing session of the year. Please attend if you can.
I have updated the lecture notes with the past couple of lectures. Also, I think I had the wrong version of lecture 4, so I replaced that too.
If you want that orion picture, check out the MSU Observatory page. It is in the pictures section.

April 14 2003

Looks clear again. See you after 8.

April 13 2003

Weather looks good for tonight, so come on out and see the wonder of variable stars. Monday may be clear as well, so stay tuned for more details.

April 9 2003

Looks like it will be clear, so we will be observing after 8:00 PM tonight. Tomorrow looks like it might be clear as well.

Lecture Notes:

The slides used during lecture will be made available here approximately one week after the lecture in both the Adobe acrobat format (pdf) and standard postscript (ps). While they do not contain all of the information presented during the actual lecture, they are given here so that students can get any complex diagrams or web urls that they may have missed. Remember that YOU ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND LECTURE.

There are also now note versions available. They printed in black and white and with 4 slides per page to make them easier to print.

Title	Full Lecture		Note Size
Lecture 1: Introduction	lecture1.pdf	lecture1.ps	notes1.pdf	notes1.ps
Lecture 4: Telescopes	lecture4.pdf	lecture4.ps	notes4.pdf	notes4.ps
Lecture 5: Telescopes and detectors	lecture5.pdf	lecture5.ps	notes5.pdf	notes5.ps
Lecture 6: More Detectors	lecture6.pdf	lecture6.ps	notes6.pdf	notes6.ps
Lecture 7: Stars, Galaxies, and Nebula	lecture7.pdf	lecture7.ps	notes6.pdf	notes6.ps
Lecture 8: The Distance Ladder	lecture8.pdf	lecture8.ps	notes8.pdf	notes8.ps
Lecture 9: Variable Star Stuff	lecture9.pdf	lecture9.ps	notes9.pdf	notes9.ps
Lecture 10: Advanced Variable Star Stuff	lecture10.pdf	lecture10.ps	notes10.pdf	notes10.ps
Lecture 11: AGN and you	lecture11.pdf	lecture11.ps	notes11.pdf	notes11.ps
Lecture 12: Cosmology	lecture12.pdf	lecture12.ps	notes12.pdf	notes12.ps
Lecture 14.5: Observing results	lecture145.pdf	lecture145.ps	notes145.pdf	notes145.ps
Lecture 15: Blazars and stuff	lecture15.pdf	lecture15.ps	notes15.pdf	notes15.ps

Old News:

March 31 2003

If you didn't get my email:

Subject : Tonights forcast...
----- Message Text -----
I know you are holding your breath just waiting on this one.

Tonight will be clear. Or cloudy. Or raining. It depends on who you
ask. So, I will tell you what I am going to do. At 7:30 I am going
to go outside. If it is clear(ish) I will head to the observatory.
If it is cloudy, I won't.

If you want to wait until close to 8:00 and call the observatory to
see if I am there, that will work too(355-skys); tonight's weather is
a little too close to call at this point. Perhaps we will know more
later this afternoon.
Don't forget about the planetarium quiz next week. We will meet at the usual class time in the usual place for about an hour of lecture and then head over to the planetarium. If you don't remember what was on homework number one, you can find it as a postscript and as a pdf.

March 31 2003

We WILL have lecture again Tuesday as well as next week. We don't have much time left so hope for some clear weather.
Also, next week we are going to try to use the Planetarium for the much talked about constellation quiz, you have now been warned. (Remember the list of objects we gave you way back at the beginning of the semester?)

March 20 2003

The notes from the past couple of lectures are now posted below. I have also finally figured out how to print more than one slide per page, so there are now black and white four slides per page versions that are more suitable for printing.
The weather is still not looking great for tonight. It is supposed to rain.

March 13 2003

It is unexpectedly clear. I will be out at the telescope around 8:00.

March 11 2003

Class will be in the usual place tonight. We will end a little early and go tour the telescope, but the weather looks like it will be cloudy so we won't observe tonight.

Feb 26 2003

It should be clear tonight, so we will be observing on the roof from 8-9 PM. Be there or be warm. (See it is going to be quite cold. It's a joke. Ok, so it isn't really all that funny but come on out anyway.) If you haven't already, you should check out the manual for the Celestron 8 GPS scopes that we use on the roof. You can find a link to the pdf in the "old news" section below.
If you wanted any more information about Pioneer 10, check out the offical web site here.

Feb 20 2003

Ok folks, it looks like it is going to be clear(ish) tonight. So you are now on a fuchsia (see entry 2 at this link) alert. We WILL BE observing tonight on the roof. If you can't make it, don't worry, we understand this is short notice. I should have some more info up here shortly, but figure we will be up there from 8 - 10 PM or so. The observation deck is located on the penthouse floor, in the South West corner of the building. Remember to go to the double doors when you get there.
If any of you were having trouble finding the links from lecture 6, here they are for your clicking enjoyment.
- NASA ADS: http://adswww.harvard.edu/
- astro-ph: http://xxx.lanl.gov/find/astro-ph
- NED: http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/
- SIMBAD: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/Simbad

Feb 10 2003

Since several people requested it, I am going to make it so that you can download the homework assignments. Until I get the rest of them up, you can find the latest assignment (Due on the 11th) here in acrobat format.

Feb 6 2003

You can find the pdf (Adobe acrobat file) for the Celestron Nexstar 8 GPS here. Please try to read through most of it when you get a chance. It is about 6.8 MB, so if you are on dial up, you may want to find another way to get it. Contact me if you need help.
I have posted the lecture notes from last time below. Next time we will continue our discussion of detectors used in astronomy and move on to some new material. We will be bringing a little physics back into the discussion soon, so expect to see things like Kepler's laws.
On the most recent homework assignment, we left out a lambda, in question one, part b. It should read "lambda = 1 m". That was my fault. Sorry about that.
It looks like the best way to describe the weather for the next week or so is "mostly cloudy". Sigh.... It will clear up eventually, so start thinking about what you would like to observe. Check out some sky charts or Starry Night to see what interesting things are up.

Jan 30 2003

Ok, as promised, here are the last two questions for this weeks homework:
Question 6. The telescope at MSU is a 24 inch Cassegrain. What is the limiting magnitude for the MSU telescope (assuming that we had a clear night and dark skies). What is the smallest angular separation that we can resolve? You might find some info from the lecture 4 slides to be useful.
Question 7. Find the magnitudes for the stars Procyon and Algol (Starry Night is handy for this). Calculate their magnitude difference and from that their brightness ratio.

Jan 29 2003

I have sent out a test email message to everyone in the class. If you did not recieve the message, let me know.

Jan 28 2003

Class will meet in BMPS 1420.
The hot topic this week will be telescopes.

Contact Info:

Head Honcho: Dr. Gene Capriotti
Email: capriotti@pa.msu.edu
Phone: 355-9200, ext. 2414
Office: BMPS 3250
Office Hours:

M W 1:00-2:30 PM
T TH 9:00-10:00 AM

TA: Aaron LaCluyze
Email: lacluyze@msu.edu
Phone: 355-9200, ext. 2443
Office: BMPS 3246
Office Hours:

T TH 2:30-4:00 PM
By appointment (email me)

This page maintained by Aaron LaCluyze. Questions or comments should be sent to lacluyze@msu.edu

AST 312: Observational Astronomy

General Info:

News:

April 24 2003

April 23 2003

April 14 2003

April 13 2003

April 9 2003

Lecture Notes:

Title

Full Lecture

Note Size

Old News:

March 31 2003

March 31 2003

March 20 2003

March 13 2003

March 11 2003

Feb 26 2003

Feb 20 2003

Feb 10 2003

Feb 6 2003

Jan 30 2003

Jan 29 2003

Jan 28 2003

Contact Info: