Astro 4: Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe*Rick NoltheniusCall me Rick. *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

Grading6 mult. choice quizzes based on my lectures, with help from the textbook. - ~10 questions each - closed notes ~2 video quizzes; after seeing ~45 min video program. Take notes and use them for your mult. choice quiz, about 20 questions eachFinal 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-showsBecauseNo make-upsExtra Credit possibilitiesBuy 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 theyre 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

The idea of the MultiVerse, the Anthropic principle and the intimate connection between alternate universes and the nature of life

Ill stress the observational facts and how we use scientific inference to arrive at ideas, and to test them to arrive at 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.

Well learn clear thinking

galileo The discovery of forces, gravity, and light

Sun in h-alpha The Sun our close up look at a star

Star birth bubble The Birth of Stars in Interstellar Clouds

Stars, clusters Star clusters and stellar evolution

pn The death of stars

Were doomed

Supernovae and Stellar death and birth

Star infall to bh

Our Milky Way Galaxy

Galaxy Evolution

Quasar gallery

dm Dark Matter What it is not, and might be

historyOfUniverseDark Energy and the Origin of the Universe

I want to believe