Syllabus
Ast 104 - Undergraduate Astronomy Seminar - Fall 2011
Wed 2 pm - #47565
Instructor: Dr. Derek Wills, Professor of Astronomy (RLM 15.314, (512) 471-1392, oo7@astro.as.utexas.edu. Office hours TuTh 1:15-2:45 or by appointment.
Prerequisites: this class is intended for current and prospective Astronomy majors. You have probably all taken or will be taking Ast 307, and the more senior students will probably have taken or will be taking Ast 352K. None of these is a formal prerequisite, though.
The class is an introduction to activities in the Astronomy department, and we'll have talks by faculty, research staff and graduate students about their research.
Grades: registration is CR/NC (pass/fail). Attendance is expected at every meeting, and to make sure that you are awake, you are asked to write a short (one typed page maximum) summary of three of the presentations - one each from talks in Sept/Oct/Nov, and in addition a short summary of three other seminars given in the department during the semester - again, one from each of Sept, Oct and Nov. These can be from any of the seminar series - Theory, Stellar, Extragalactic, Interstellar Medium (which includes some planetary stuff), the catch-all "Cosmos" seminar, or the weekly Colloquium. The seminar calendar is to be found at http://www.as.utexas.edu/calendar/ and a printed version is in the display case outside the seminar room (where we meet). For your own benefit you should visit more than one of these seminars (reports of talks in at least two different seminar series are required - e.g. two ex-gal and one theory report, or one from each of stellar, theory, colloquium etc).
You may also want to join the Astronomy Students' Association, which meets on Wednesday evenings - they welcome new (free) memberships, and among other activities they organize an annual visit to McDonald Observatory in west Texas.
