Physics 440, "Astrophysics I", Winter 2003

This material can be found online at URL

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys440/phys440.html

Outline for the course

Syllabus

Lectures

1. A review of coordinates
2. The distance to asteroid 2002 NY40 via parallax
3. Heliocentric parallax
4. Bias in parallax measurements

5. The magnitude scale
6. Blackbody radiation

7. Astronomical spectra, filters and magnitudes
8. Astronomical "color"
9. Measuring stellar sizes

10. Elliptical orbits
11. Kepler's Third Law
12. The "Reduced Mass" approach

13. The equivalence of real and reduced-mass systems
14. Integrals of motion and Kepler's Third Law (again)
15. The effect of a tilted orbital plane

16. Removing the tilt from a visual binary's orbit
17. Using the virial theorem: mass of a globular cluster
18. Using the virial theorem: mass of a cluster of galaxies
19. Digression: the Lagrange points in the 3-body problem

20. Introduction to Stellar Spectra
21. Spectral Classification
22. The Boltzmann Equation
23. The Saha Equation

24. Digression: The Expanding Photosphere Method
25. Luminosity class and the HR diagram
26. Properties of the Radiation Field
27. (Local) Thermodynamic Equilibrium

28. Optical Depth
29. The causes of opacity
    • A record-setting example of the Lyman dropout technique
30. Breaking News: A star is born!

31. Vermin of the sky
32. Random walks
33. Limb darkening
34. The shape of spectral lines
35. The curve of growth

Homework sets

1. HW 1: Coordinates and parallax.
   • Answers to HW 1
2. HW 2: Magnitudes, fluxes, and spectra: oh, my! (due in class Friday, Dec 19)
   • Answers to HW 2
3. HW 3: Orbits (due in class Monday, Jan 12)
4. HW 4: The orbit of 70 Oph (due in class Wednesday, Jan 28)
5. HW 5: Stellar atmospheres (due in class Friday, Feb 13)
6. HW 6: Final homework set (due Thursday, Feb 26, at 9:00 AM)

For more information

• J. B. Tatum of the University of Victoria has put onto the web a great set of notes, including chapters on Celestial Mechanics.
• You can find the full text of The Fundamentals of Stellar Astrophysics by G. W. Collins II, as well as other books, at the ADS Digital Library.
• Questions about statistical estimates? Perhaps Rene Andrae's guide to error estimation in astronomy might help.

This page maintained by Michael Richmond. Last modified Jul 19, 2007.

Copyright © Michael Richmond. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.