Course Documents and Links

• NYRB: The Crisis of Big Science by Steven Weinberg
• MHAA: Transit of Venus - June 5th, 5:00PM

• AMNH: The Known Universe
• Zooniverse - Science Projects - real citizen science you can be a part of

• Bad Astronomy: The Supermoon stuff? AGAIN?
• NASA: Supermoon 2012

• Presentation: Einstein@Home: Gravitational Wave Astronomy with Your Home Computer
• LIGO Observatories - Google Earth placemarks and tour

• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - how stars can appear to change color

• Homework 12 and Solutions (partial)

• World's Largest Digital Camera Project Passes Critical Milestone

• Presentation: News and Stuff
• PBS: NOVA - Secrets of the Sun Wed April 25th at 9PM on PBS
• NY Times: In Pursuit of Riches, and Travelers' Supplies, in the Asteroid Belt
• IO9: It's Official: James Cameron and Google Unveil Plans for Asteroid-Mining

• Presentation: Big Bang Cosmology
• The Particle Adventure - an introduction to high energy particle physics
• The Scale of the Universe 2

• Homework 11 and Solutions

• Presentation: Active Galaxies
• "Distant Galaxies Confirm Accelerating Growth of Universe, Dark Energy"

• Presentation: Galaxies and Clusters
• Interactive: Atlas of the Universe: The Satellite Galaxies
  (Note the zoom in / zoom out buttons at the bottom)
• Presentation: Significant Figures ("Sig Figs")
• Brian May and Zodiacal dust

• Homework 10 and Solutions

• Presentation: The Milky Way
• New York Times: At the End of the Earth, Seeking Clues to the Universe
• NYT Slide Show: High in Chilean Desert, a Huge Astronomy Project
• Animation: Population I and Population II orbits
• Animation: The Milky Way

• Homework 9 and Solutions

• Bad Astronomy Blog by Phil Plait

• Presentation: The Search for Life
• Interactive: NOVA | The Drake Equation
• This is Sirius!

• Presentation: Special Stars
• Animation: Spectral Binaries
• Animation: An eclipsing binary and its light curve

• Homework 8 and Solutions

• Presentation: The Lives of Stars
• Animation: Planet formation from the solar nebula

• Homework 7 and Solutions

• The Scale of the Universe 2

• Presentation: Logarithms, Exponents, and Logarithmic Scales
• Presentation: Why do Stars Shine?
• Animation: A model of a hydrogen atom
• Animation: The proton-proton chain

• Presentation: Properties of Stars
• Animation: Parallax
• Animation: Absorption (of light, by atoms)
• Bad Astronomy: Runaway Star (proper motion of Barnard's star)

• Homework 6 and Solutions

• Presentation: Units Convertions - the fraction cancelation trick
• Presentation: The Search for Exoplanets
• Animation: Transit Graph (from NASA)
• Animation: The position and Doppler shift of a star orbiting its common center of mass with a planet
• Animation: The Doppler Effect

• Presentation: Formation of the Solar System
• Animation: Planet formation from the solar nebula
• Animation: Flattening and spreading up of a collapsing interstellar cloud

• Homework 5 and Solutions

• Presentation: Moons, Rings, Asteroids, and Comets
• Animation: Oort cloud and Kuiper belt
• Animation: A 2:1 Resonance

• Presentation: A quick tour of the Solar System
• The Peppercorn Model: How Big is the Solar System?
• Transit of Venus .org
• xkcd comic: Gravity Wells by Randall Munroe
  (click on the comic to explore a full-sized version)

• Homework 4 and Solutions

• Textbook On-Line Learning Center: Animations
• Textbook On-Line Learning Center: Interactives

• Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association
• Solar System Exploration from NASA
• Metric system prefixes

• Example: Newton's law of gravitation
• Escape from Earth

• Homework 3 and Solutions

• Refraction of light
• Ray diagrams: how a magnifying glass works

• How to compute Synodic period

• Homework 2 and Solutions

• NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day

• Elmo and the Moon: what's wrong with this picture?

• The history of modern Astronomy as a football field

• Homework 1 and Solutions

• Example: converting degrees, minutes, seconds to decimal degrees
• Example: converting decimal degrees to degrees, minutes, and seconds

• How Iridium Flares work
• Iridium Flares at Marist College

• Origami Answer Card 1234
• Origami Answer Card 567?

• Getting Started with Stellarium
• General Course Information