Lecture Notes — Adventures in Astronomy

Lecture Notes

Week 1. Geo-centrism, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler’s Laws, the Kepler-Newton Law, & the Scientific Method

Week 2. Eclipse, Tides, Planet Densities, & the Solar System Formation

Week 3. Planets, Rings, the Moon, Escape Velocity, Atmospheres, & the Greenhouse Effect

Week 4. Newton’s 3 Laws & his Law of Gravitation, Gravity, Mass from Orbital Radius & Velocity, Dating Rocks, Comets, Asteroids, & Distances via Parallax

Week 5. Distances via Cepheid Variable stars, Discovering the Andromeda Galaxy, the Sun, & Fusion

Week 6. The Inverse Square Law, Fusion, Quantized Energy, Block Body Radiation, StellarTemperatures, & Stellar Luminosity

Week 7. Star lifetimes, Element Creation, Explosions, & Gamma Ray Bursts

Week 8. Pulsars, the Extra-Large Telescope, the Event Horizon Telescope, the Very Large Array, and Space Telescopes.

Week 9. The night sky, Galaxies, & Synchrotron Radiation

Week 10. Galaxy velocity of recession, galaxy distances, the Hubble-Lemaitre law, the Cosmologic Principl e.

Week 11. Special and General Relativity, black holes, gravitational waves, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Week 12. The Cosmological Principle, the universe without edge or center, the Big Bang, redshift, early universe, expanding universe.

Week 13. Inflation, the 4 forces of nature, String Theory, & the Anthropic Principle.

Week 13. Women Astronomers; Intelligent Civilizations in the Universe.

Week 14. Are there extra-terrestrial civilizations on Earth?