AST 308

Galaxies & Cosmology

Fall 2011

Tu-Th 12:40-2:00 Room 1420 BPS

General Info

Instructor: Jack Baldwin

(baldwin@pa.msu.edu), Room 3270 BPS, (517) 884-5611

Office Hours: Regular office hours are Mo 11-12, Th 2-3. Or catch me in my office whenever you can… I’m usually there from 9AM – 5 PM, except Wed 11:30-3:00.

Textbook: Carroll & Ostlie, An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, 2^nd edition..

Errata

Current version of syllabus (pdf)

Some Websites to bookmark:

ADS abstract service form: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html

ADS journal/volume/page query: http://adsabs.harvard.edu//bib_abs.html

To access many of the recent articles, you need to be using the internet from campus).

ArXiv astro-ph eprint archive: http://xxx.lanl.gov/form/astro-ph?MULTI=form+interface

SIMBAD database: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad

NED database: http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html

HST Digitized Sky Survey: http://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_form

Ned Wright’s Javascript Cosmology Calculator: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html

Plus a few observing tools

Cloud cover forecasts: http://cleardarksky.com/

Airmass calculator: http://www.briancasey.org/artifacts/astro/airmass.cgi

Precession calculator: http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/support/tools/precess.html

Sunrise/set, moonrise/set: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html

Sidereal time clock: http://www.jgiesen.de/astro/astroJS/siderealClock/

Final Exam

Tuesday, Dec 13 at 12:45PM.

Study Guides for Exams

Midterm 1

Midterm 2

Final

Homework Assignments

Homework 1

Homework 4

Homework 5 Due Tu Nov 1

Homework 6 Due Tu Nov 22

Homework 7 Due Tu Dec 6

Lecture Notes, etc.

Galaxy types (jpeg)

The Psychedelic Barred Spiral Movie

Sept. 1

Sept. 6

Sept. 8

Sept 13 (updated to correct 2 errors noticed during lecture)

+ extra material handed out on Sept 13 (includes homework assignment 2)

Sept 15

Sept 20 (includes slides about parallax, from Sept 15 lecture, + correction to top slide, pg. 4.)

Sept 22 (density wave material. Also went through slides left over from Sept. 15 web notes)

Sept 27

Sept 29 (updated after lecture, to include a correction to the virial theorem equation given in the top slide on pg 6. The factor of 5 in the final result is correct… I had left out a factor of ½ earlier on. I also added a slide at the end commenting on right and wrong answers to two of the homework problems)

Oct 6

Oct 11

Oct 13 (+ some slides from Oct 11 notes)

Oct 18 (big overlap with Oct 13 slides)

Books about Relativity

Oct 20 (updated right after lecture to correct error on slide 12)

Oct 25

Oct 27

Nov 1

Nov 8 (updated right after lecture)

Nov 10

OK… it’s not a manatee.