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The second Midterm is on May 15. We will have a review session
on Thursday, May 11, at 5:30pm (place to be announced; 1008 if the room is
not occupied for another purpose at this time).
Please prepare questions to ask in the review session. I will be giving a list of problems from the book that you can do to prepare for the exam. We can go through these problems, through the key questions and through any other questions you have.
Review Problems for Midterm II
The exam will consist of some problems similar to the ones you have done in your homework, plus some more qualitative questions.
Rules for the exam:
You can bring any notes that are handwritten by yourself, like notes
you take on class or any summaries of the books or list of equations that
you write.
No books, homework solutions, or any printed material is allowed in the
exam. You can bring a calculator.
This exam will count 12% toward the final grade.
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Welcome to the Astronomy 172 course! You are about to start a journey
of discovery of the Universe in which you have been born. Over most of
your life, you will be looking down to the ground and focusing your
attention in getting along with your life in the Earth. We are like
microbes that spend all our lifes in the same grain of sand, oblivious
to the beach where we live. If matter in the universe had a fixed
price per unit mass, and the Sun cost 1000$, then Jupiter would cost
1$, and for the Earth you would not even get a worthless penny.
The Galaxy would cost the entire Gross Domestic Product of the USA
accumulated for the last decade. Over the whole observable universe,
there are just about as many galaxies as there are stars in our Galaxy.
And, as you will learn in this course, the universe may be much bigger
than the part that we can observe.
Most of the actions that people take in their daily life will probably be of little relevance to the people who will be living only a hundred years from now. But the universe has existed for 10 billion years, and will continue to exist for much longer. This course will give you an opportunity for turning your head upwards, learn about the real universe you are part of, and contemplating it. You will learn about the Sun, how it was born, how it works, how it will die. You will learn about other stars, about the matter between the stars, and about our Galaxy. You will learn how the atoms in your body were made in the universe. You will learn that all the matter that makes yourself, the Earth and the whole universe started its existence at the time of the Big Bang. You will learn what happened to all that matter and what continues to happen today. Hopefully, an awareness of our Universe can give us a perspective of our existence as a human society, and of what we can hope for our future.
Monday 11:15-12:15pm
Teaching assistant office hours: These will be held in Room 4000,
McPherson, at the following times:
Tuesday 1:00-2:00
The teaching assistant is Zheng Zheng.
Come to the office hours whenever you have a question, or there is that
homework problem that you cannot figure out how to solve! The instructor
is here to help you study, so don't hesitate to come to office hours.
Students who ask questions in the lectures and use office hours
always do better in their courses.
If you cannot come during regular office hours,
I can make a special appointment to see you in my office at a different time.
Simply ask me after class or e-mail me.
Office Hours
Regular Office Hours will be held in my office in Room 4021, McPherson,
at the following times:
Tuesday 8:30-9:30am
Thursday 1:30-2:30pm
Thursday 1:00-2:00
Friday 11:30-12:30
There will be 46 lectures during the course, running from March 27 to June 2.
The syllabus page will give you the information on the material to be
covered at every lecture. Every lecture has a number of key questions,
and key points. The key points provide you with a very brief summary
of the most important things you need to have learned for this lecture.
After you attend the lecture, you can look at the key points to see if you
understand what they all mean. If you do not fully understand them, that
means you have not learned the material sufficiently well to get a good
grade in this course. You should then prepare questions that you can ask
in class or during office hours.
The key questions are questions that you should clearly know the answer
to after you have attended lecture and read the assigned material from
the textbook. If there are key questions that you do not know the answer
to, it also means there was something in the lecture you did not understand
properly. Make sure to ask me about that before the exam is upon you.
You are strongly encouraged to ask questions, during class and in
office hours, but I am afraid I will not be able to answer your questions
during the exam... =:-)
The Radio Image around the M87 Galaxy observed with the Very Large Array
What is astronomy about? Since ancient times, astronomy has been about
watching the sky. At present, precisely when scientists are rapidly
advancing in the understanding of astronomy, most people are being
deprived of the spectacle of the sky because of pollution and city lights.
But thanks to the internet, we can watch pictures of celestial objects by
using the resources in a multitude of websites. Explore the links
provided here, which will bring you to images of star clusters
(open and globular), gaseous nebulae, galaxies, etc.
As part of learning astronomy, you simply need to have a good idea of
what all these objects really look like.
Among many other links below, you can try the Astronomy Picture of the
Day, where every day a different picture of some interesting object in
the sky is displayed. If you then go to the index, you can click on any class
of objects you wish, to access the archive of all images that have been
displayed in the past. You should try also the Messier and NGC catalogues,
the Ohio State University Astronomical Picture Gallery,
and the Hubble Space Telescope Image Archive. The NCSA has put together
a fascinating exposition
Cosmos in a Computer featuring some of the latest state-of-the-art
simulations of our Universe. Be sure to try the
exhibit
map to navigate the site. Astronomy 172 Spring Quarter 2000
Teaching Assistant: Zheng Zheng
Course Info and Resources
You will have to complete for this course 6 homeworks and a paper.
There will be three in-class exams, and a final exam.
The final grade of the course will be determined according to the
following rule:
Homework 1 (due April 3)
Homework 2 (due April 10)
Homework 3 (due April 19)
Homework 4 (due May 3)
Homework 5 (due May 11)
Homework 6 (due May 25)
Here is the detailed information on the
Paper Assignment .
Textbook
The textbook we will use in Astronomy-172 is "Discovering the Cosmos",
by Robert C. Bless.
The syllabus specifies the chapters that are required reading.
It is highly recommended that you read what is assigned in the syllabus
before every lecture. The assigned reading will complement what
will be taught in the lectures; it will also help you to prepare questions,
which you can ask during class.
Roof and Planetarium Nights
The Hubble Deep Field
The faintest sources of light ever detected by human beings are the
galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field. Some of these galaxies are seen when
the universe was only 10% or 20% of its present age. This is our view
of the universe that is our home: we see galaxies into the past, being
born and evolving to their present form.
Click here
to see a movie where you start with a wide-angle view of the sky toward
the constellation of Ursa Major (the Big Dipper), then you zoom in and
see a smaller and smaller region of the sky until you end up in the
Hubble Deep Field. All the sky around you is filled with similar images
of faint galaxies as they were forming and evolving throughout the history
of the universe!
COBE Picture of the Milky Way
Our view of the Milky Way Galaxy is hindered in visual light by dust
obscuration. Absorption by dust is greatly reduced in the wavelengths
of the far-infrared (much longer wavelength than visual light).
Observations in the far-infrared must be done from space, because the
Earth atmosphere is opaque to light at these wavelengths.
The COBE satellite has given to us the best unobscured pictures of the
Galaxy we live in. The picture shows many individual stars, the dust
lane in the disk, and the bulge. Notice the asymmetry of the bulge,
appearing slightly larger on the left side; this is an indication of
the presence of a small bar in the inner parts of the Milky Way.
Movie of Stars orbiting around Black Hole in
the Center of the Milky Way
VLA Radio image of the Virgo galaxy M87
Giant galaxies in the centers of clusters harbor massive black holes in
their cores, which eject jets of matter at relativistic speeds. Over
millions of years, these jets energize the halo of hot gas surrounding
the galaxy. Relativistic electrons produced in the jet slowly lose their
energy spiraling in the magnetic fields of the energized cloud, creating
these beautiful images in the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Cosmology in a Computer
Where to find me:
MTWRF 9:30am-10:18am McPherson Room 1008
Instructor: Jordi Miralda-Escudé
Assistant Professor of Astronomy
Office: McPherson 4021
Phone: (614) 292-8632
FAX: (614) 292-2928
email: jordi@astronomy.ohio-state.edu
Teaching Assistant Email:
zhengz@astronomy.ohio-state.edu
Telephone 2-3099, Room 4000 McPherson
Jordi Miralda-Escudé
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