1. Astronomy 103 Main Ideas to be covered: Lecturer: Prof. Alex Lazarian
Office Location: 6289 Chamberlin Hall
Website:
Office Hours: Mon. 11am-1pm, Wed. 11am-1pm. Meetings at a different time can also be arranged.
Course Reading: Pathways to Astronomy Schneider & Arny 4nd edition
Exams:
0th training exam -- 0% (Oct. 6)
1st exam – 25% (Oct. 15)
2nd exam—25% (Nov. 10)
final exam—30% (Dec. 15)
total for homework, quizzes, presentations -- 20%
Main Ideas to be covered:
*Subject of astronomy (Units 1--4)
*Observations of planets and stars (Units 5--12)
*Laws of gravity, dark matter (Units 14-20)
*Light, atoms, spectra (Units )
*Stars: Sun as an example (Units )
*Learning about stars (Units )
*Birth and evolution of stars (Units 56—63, 69)
*When the fuel begins to run out (Units )
*Supernova, neutron stars and black holes (Units )
*Galaxies and quasars (Units )
*Our galaxy- Milky Way (Units )
*The expanding Universe (Units )
*Life in the Universe (Units )
*Review of the course

2. My PhD is from Cambridge University
Prof. V. Ginzburg
Martin Rees
V. Ginzburg
My PhD is from Cambridge University

3. Why do I study Astronomy?
“Education is kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”
Socrates

4. My goals for the course:
Share my excitement with Astrophysics
Provide a survey of most of Astronomy
Show that Astronomy is a quest for our origins
Show how science is done
Look at my personal web page to know more about my research

5. The Earth
The Earth is a planet, a body in orbit around a star (The Sun)
Radius: 6371 km (3909 miles)
Mass: around 6 billion trillion tons
Actual value:
5,970,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
Too many zeros!
Use 5.97  1027 kg, instead!
Metric System
Easier to use (everything is a factor of 10!)

6. The Moon is a satellite, a body orbiting a planet
Rocky world, littered with craters
Bombarded by meteors
Where are the Earth’s craters?
Smaller than the Earth
Less than 1/80 the mass
¼ the diameter of Earth
Small, so cooled quickly!
Cold, airless and lifeless

7. Wide variety of planets in the Solar System
The Planets
Why are they so different?
How did they get this way?
Wide variety of planets in the Solar System
Rocky, hot and airless worlds
Gas giants and ringed wonders
Cold planets of blue methane
Tiny icy bodies

8. The Sun
The Sun is a star, a huge ball of gas held together by gravity and generating light through thermonuclear reactions
Source of all energy in the Solar System
100x wider than the Earth, and 300,000x as massive!
Young, yet old
4 billion years old
Will last another 5 or 6 billion years

9. The Solar System
Planets, asteroids, comets and dust all held together by the Sun’s gravity
Everything goes around the Sun on elliptical paths called orbits
All orbits lie in the same plane, like peas rolling around on a dinner plate
Too big to describe using meters – we need something more convenient

10. A convenient measure – the Astronomical Unit
It is convenient to measure planetary distances using the Astronomical Unit, or AU
1 AU = average distance between the Earth and the Sun
1 AU ~ 150 million km
Some planetary distances:
Mercury: 0.4 AU
Mars: 1.5 AU
Saturn: 10 AU
Pluto: 40 AU