- Required Reading - Textbook
Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 8 (skip Chaps. 2, 3, 7)
- Important Lecture Material
History of Astronomy
- Remember the development of the subject and general
concepts but not facts like dates, specific quotes, etc.
Electromagnetic Radiation
- Wavelength, frequency, and speed of light
- The electromagnetic spectrum
- Color and why something looks red
Optics
- Reflection and refraction
- Dispersion (the dependence of refraction on the light's wavelength)
- The notion of an image
- Lenses and how a camera works
- Reflective and refracting telescopes and why reflectors are now preferred
- Diffraction and "seeing"
- The spectrograph
- Atmospheric windows
Perfect Radiators
- Distribution functions and radiation from a perfect radiator
- Wein's Law
- Stefan-Boltzmann Law
- Logical connections
color (Wein's Law) Æ temperature
temperature Æ total luminosity per unit area (Stefan-Boltzmann Law)
brightness + distance Æ luminosity (Inverse Square Law)
luminosity + luminosity per unit area Æ area of star
Quanta-Photons
Spectra
- Continuous spectra, bright line spectra, dark line spectra
- The hydrogen spectrum
Atoms
- The guts of an atom (protons, electrons, neutrons)
- Isotopes and ions
- Electron jumps and the emission and absorption of photons
- The spectral lines in hydrogen
- Ionization
The Doppler Effect
Interpretation of Stellar Spectra
- Effects of temperature
- Effect of composition
- Effect of motions in the atmosphere
- Effect of rotation
The Spectral Sequence
Where are the Stars?
- Parallax and the parsec
- Inverse Square Law
- Space motions of stars
- Frames of reference
- Stellar magnitudes
Luminosity Function
Stellar Masses and Densities
Mass-Luminosity Relation
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
- Giants, main-sequence, white dwarfs
- Importance of a relationship
- Using perfect-radiator notions to deduce stellar sizes on H-R diagram
- Cluster fitting
- Importance of star clusters
Mechanics
- DeŽnitions: velocity, speed, acceleration, force, mass
- Newton's Laws of Motion
- Gravity
- Weight
- Motion of a tossed object
- Newton's form of Kepler's 3rd Law
Orbits of Stars Around Each Other
- Center of mass of the system at both stars' orbital focus
Binary Stars
- Optical binaries
- Visual binaries
Getting sum of masses
Getting ratio of masses
- Astrometric binaries
- Spectroscopic binaries
- Eclipsing binaries
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