Syllabus for Physics 445

I have listed below the main topics of the course. The dates are a rough guide to the amount of time we'll spend on each topic. It is possible that some topics may be compressed or expanded as the course evolves.

Week 1: Basic knowledge of the sky
	astronomical coordinate systems
	the many different kinds of time
	magnitudes
	photometric systems and colors
	extinction, seeing and other real-life complications
Week 2: Planning an observing run
	ephemerides and tools for making finding charts
	astronomical catalogs
	planetarium programs
Week 3: Telescopes and Cameras
	the RIT telescopes
	introduction to CCDs
	CCDs: The Dark Side
	Using Mac lab computers to analyze images
Week 4: Noise properties of CCDs
	Sample project ideas (a brief digression)
	Analyzing dark frames from Sep 25, 2003
	Hot pixels and cosmic rays
	Median dark frames
	Flatfield images
Week 5: Planning for your observing runs ( note Gosnell Mac lab unavailable this week between 4-5 PM )
	Planning an observing run
	Signal versus Noise (some theory)
	Signal versus Noise, with illustrations
Weeks 6: Putting it all together
	CCD Gain
	Simple aperture photometry by hand
	The Astronomical Literature
	The Typical Reduction Procedure
Week 7: Data Analysis
	Placing CCD photometry on a standard system
	Looking for the period
Weeks 8, 9: Stuff they don't teach in any courses
	What if the period isn't quite right?
	Poster basics
	Writing your own scientific paper
Weeks 9-10: Doing your project
	making a poster

This page maintained by Michael Richmond. Last modified Oct 2, 2003.

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