Lectures:

 

Lecture transcripts, in compressed folders: (pdf) * (txt). These are imperfect, but you may find them useful.


Lecture 1: Astronomy as a science

    Some early history. Astronomy as a quantitative science, and as a branch of physics. Types of observations and their intrinsic limitations.

 

Lecture 2: Starting the Exploration

    Some common units. Distances and parallaxes. An overview of scales and structures. Kepler's laws and their basis in Newtonian mechanics. Celestial coordinate systems and time systems.

 

Week 1 - Lectures 1 and 2: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 3: Telescopes and Detectors

    Optical telescopes and their history. Basics of geometrical optics. Detectors in UV, visible, IR. Radio telescopes. X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes and detectors. Non-electromagnetic messengers.

 

Lecture 4: Electromagnetic Radiation and its Interaction with Matter

    Basics. Kirchhoff's laws. The origin of spectroscopic lines. Blackbody radiation. Other continuum mechanisms. Fluxes and magnitudes.

 

Week 2 - Lectures 3 and 4: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 5: Interstellar medium, the birth of stars and planets

    ISM phenomenology and properties. Interstellar dust. Star formation. Planetary system formation.

 

Lecture 6: Our Solar System

    Basic overview. Major components. Formation of the Solar system. Planetary atmospheres.

 

Week 3 - Lectures 5 and 6: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 7: Planets Beyond the Solar System

    Thermodynamics of planets, the greenhouse effect, and the global warming. Methods to search for exoplanets. Studies of exoplanets. Life in the universe.

 

Lecture 8: Stellar Structure and the Sun

    Basic considerations. Energy generation. Energy transport. Our Sun.

 

Week 4 - Lectures and 7 and 8: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 9: Stellar Evolution

    HR diagram. Star clusters. Main sequence. Evolution past the main sequence.

 

Lecture 10: End States of Stellar Evolution

    White dwarfs. Contact binaries and resulting variable stars. Supernova types. Supernovae of type Ia and II. Supernova remnants.

 

Week 5 - Lectures and 9 and 10: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 11: Neutron Stars, Pulsars, and Black Holes

    How they form and how they work.

 

Lecture 12: Our Galaxy, the Milky Way

    Overall structure, major components, stellar populations. Kinematics, rotation, dark halo. Spiral structure. Local group, evidence of hierarchical assembly.

 

Week 6 - Lectures and 11 and 12: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 13: Galaxies: Morphology, Classification, and Basic Properties

    Hubble sequence and its origins. Basic properties of different galaxy types. Galaxy interactions and mergers. Scaling relations and their uses.

 

Lecture 14: Galaxy Formation and Evolution

    Basic concepts and modeling of galaxy evolution. Observations of galaxy evolution. The history of star formation in the universe. Intergalactic medium and its evolution. Galaxy formation and the earliest galaxies. The reionization era.

 

Week 7 - Lectures and 13 and 14: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 15: Large Scale Structure, Its Formation and Evolution

    Large scale structure: basic observations, redshift surveys. Galaxy correlation function and the power spectrum. Large scale velocity field. Bias and evolution of galaxy clustering. Origins and growth of the large scale structure from primordial density fluctuations. Clusters of galaxies.

 

Lecture 16: Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei

    Basic properties and classification. Unification models. Fueling and jets. High energy emission and the cosmic X-ray background. Formation and evolution of AGN, and their co-evolution with galaxies.

 

Week 8 - Lectures and 15 and 16: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 17: The Expanding Universe: Introduction to Cosmology

    The cosmic expansion. Cosmological redshift. Cosmological models and parameters. Distances in cosmology.

 

 

Lecture 18: The Early Universe and the Cosmic Microwave Background

    Some basic ideas about the physics of the early universe. The Cosmic Microwave Background. The Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. The cosmic inflation. The very early universe.

 

Week 9 - Lectures and 17 and 18: Summary of the Key Ideas

 

Lecture 19: Measuring the Universe: Cosmological Distance Scale and Cosmological Tests

    The distance ladder. Stellar distance indicators and Cepheids. The HST Hubble Constant Key Project. Distance Indicator relations. The age of the universe. Cosmological tests. Tests for the expansion of the universe. Supernova standard candles and the Hubble diagram. CMB cosmology and the angular diameter test.

 

Lecture 20: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Concordance Cosmology

    Matter/energy contents of the universe. Gravitational lensing as a probe of the dark matter distribution. Dark energy. Concordance cosmology.

 

Week 10 - Lectures and 19 and 20: Summary of the Key Ideas