Astro 4: Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe

*Rick NoltheniusCall me “Rick”. (“Mr. Nolthenius” sounds uncool) *Office: 706a 479-6506*email: rinolthe@cabrillo.edu *visit my extremely excellent website!

Textbook – “The Cosmic Perspective – Stars,

Galaxies, Cosmology” – Bennett, Donahue,

Schneider, and Voit; 5th Edition

• ~$70 new in the bookstore. No used ones around yet.

• I will try to get one copy on reserve in the library

Grading• 6 mult. choice quizzes based on text. - ~10 questions each - closed notes• 3 video quizzes, after seeing ~45 min video

program. Take notes and use them for your mult. choice quiz, about 20 questions each

• Final Exam: 50 mult. choice questions. You may have a single 8x10 sheet of paper crammed with all the notes you can muster!

• Your two lowest scores will be dropped. That includes no-shows

• Because…No make-ups• Extra Credit possibilities• Buy 10 green narrow scantron sheets

from the book store. $3. Cheap! Keep them in your notebook along with a pencil.

What will We Do in Astro 4?• We start with the nature of Science, reason, and the principles of

clear thinking. My own “Chapter 0” on the principles of clear thinking and scientific method

• Some basic ideas: Forces, Gravity, the nature of light and matter

• The sun, our up-close look at a typical star

• Then to boldly go, on to the stars! How they’re born, their lives, their deaths, and how death gives rise to new life

• Violence in Space! Supernovae, black holes, gamma ray bursts

• Then galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their heart

• The Big Bang origin of the Universe. Inflation, Dark Matter, Dark Energy

• Parallel universes, the anthropic principle and the intimate connection between alternate universes and the nature of life

• I’ll stress the observational facts and how we use scientific inference to arrive at ideas, and to test them to home in on our current theories of the Universe. Exams will stress getting a picture of processes and the ‘why’ behind what we see, not so much on memorized factoids.

We’ll learn clear thinking

galileo

Sun in h-alpha

Star birth bubble

Stars, clusters

pn

We’re doomed

crab

Star infall to bh

andromeda

Antenna galaxies

Quasar gallery

dm

historyOfUniverse

I want to believe