Syllabus

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ASTRONOMY 301
INTRODUCTION TO ASTRONOMY
CLASS NOTES 1

David L. Lambert
Unique No: 46660

Class Meetings: TTH 8:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. WEL 3.502
Instructor: David L. Lambert
Office: RLM 16.316
Office Hours: Tue, Wed, Thu 10:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.; Mon and Fri by appointment
Telephone: 512-471-7438 office; 512-502-9804 home
Teaching Assistants: Nalin Vutisalcavakul
Jinsong Liu
Text: Stars and Galaxies by M.A. Seeds and Dana Backman, published by the Cengage Learning and available at the Co-Op. I shall use the 9th edition of the text but earlier editions maybe used but note that page references may be different.

Class notes will be available on the web at:
https://www.as.utexas.edu/astronomy/education/fall15/lambert/301.html

Note! There is material in the text which will not be covered in class. Conversely, some topics discussed in class are not in the text.
Grades: Your grade will be based on your performance in the 3 in-class quizzes (Q), about 6 homework assignments (H), and the final exam (F). The scores will be weighted as follows:

F = 40%; Q = 35%; H = 25%

A numerical grade will be assigned to these components. The final conversion to a letter grade will be as follows:

A = 90% or greater
B+ = 89 – 84%, B = 83 – 79, B- = 78 – 74
C+ = 73 – 70%, C = 69 – 64, C- = 63 – 60
D = 59 – 45%
F = less than 44%

I reserve the right to make minor adjustments to the above scale. If you are taking this course on a pass/fail basis, University rules give the passing grade as equivalent to a D or higher.
Students with Disabilities: Please notify me of any modification/adaptation you may require to accommodate a disability-related need. You will be requested to provide documentation to the Dean of Students' Office, in order that the most appropriate accommodations can be determined. Specialized services are available on campus through Services for Students with Disabilities.
Class Rules: Homework assignments will be handed out for return in not less than 1 week. Each assignment will have a due date. Late assignments will not be accepted for grading unless I have been given and have accepted your reasons for requesting an extension prior to the due date. In no case will late homeworks be accepted after the graded homeworks have been returned and answers distributed.

For the final grade your numerical grade for the quizzes will be computed from the best 2 of the 3 individual quiz scores. Since we count only the best 2 of 3 quizzes in the final grade, there will be no make-up quizzes. On the syllabus page I list projected dates for the quizzes; I reserve the right to make minor adjustments to these dates as the semester progresses. The final grade for the homework assignments will be based on the best 4 of the 6 homeworks.

The final examination will be comprehensive. It will be held on the date scheduled by the University. There will be NO make-up scheduled before or after the final exam.

Note now the date and time: Monday, December 14, 9:00 – 12:00 noon

All work handed in for grading must be your own work. If you discuss the homework assignment with a friend, I urge you to use your own words and imagination in writing your answers. If you are puzzled by a question, do not copy out a friend’s answer, but stop by the office and discuss the problem. If you wish, make an appointment for a regular discussion period. Don’t be shy! I am here to help!

Copying during exams in a heinous crime for which the punishment will be an F for the exam at minimum to an F for the course at maximum. I shall not hesitate to report such cases to the Dean of Students.

The University's deadlines and rules regarding "dropping" the course will be strictly enforced. I shall assume that you are conversant with these deadlines and rules.
University Rules: The University's deadlines and rules regarding "dropping" the course will be strictly enforced. I shall assume that you are conversant with these deadlines and rules.

  1. Adds/Drops before the 12th class day: During the first four (1-4) class days, students may add and drop courses. During days five through twelve (5-12), students may drop courses online, but must go to the department offering the course to seek permission to add a course. Be advised that some departments do not allow adds/drops after the fourth class day. For those departments that do allow adds/drops, the add-transactions before the twelfth class day will be processed in the respective department. Students who wish to add a class after the twelfth class day will be required to see a counselor in the Student Division of the Dean’s Office and provide justification for the proposed change. The student must have written permission and documentation of class attendance from the instructor.
  2. Dropping a course during the open Q-drop period: After the end of the fourth week of class, and until the deadline for dropping courses, a student wishing to drop a course will ask the instructor to complete a drop form that assigns a Q or an F. The symbol Q indicates an average of C or better at the time of the drop, or that no grade has yet been assigned, or that due to the student’s performance and the nature of the course, no academic penalty is in order, or that for documented non-academic reasons, no academic penalty is in order.
  3. Deadline for dropping a course without penalty: The deadline for dropping courses is September 11, 2015, for the Fall semester. After the deadline, students are not allowed to drop or withdraw from school for academic reasons. If a student has compelling nonacademic reasons to drop or withdraw, a written appeal must be presented in the Student Division of the respective Dean’s office.
  4. Courses taken on a pass/fail basis: The University defines a D as a passing grade for undergraduate students. The instructor is obliged to assign a grade of CR (Credit) for a student registered on a pass/fail basis who has a D or better in the course. It is important that the roster indicate the student is registered for the course on a pass;/fail basis. Otherwise, a letter grade must be assigned. There is a time limit for students to change course from a grade basis to pass/fail basis and vice versa. It is the same as the final deadline for drop/withdrawal for academic reasons. After the deadline, students should see a Counselor in the Student Division of the Dean’s Office. Students are allowed to change the status of any given course only one time during the pass/fail time period.
Help Sessions: If you find that a part of our syllabus is puzzling, please come and see me. I shall be happy to discuss the problems with you. The TA is also available for consultation. Review sessions will be scheduled prior to due dates for homeworks and quizzes. I have a selection of texts by other authors which are available for loan. A different text may offer a different insight into a tricky issue.
Miscellaneous: Astronomy is an observational science. In order to gather observations for my research and that of the students, visits to the University’s McDonald Observatory in west Texas are necessary. If I have to miss a class for this (or another) reason, the class will meet as usual.

You may be interested to visit our Student Observatory on the roof of Painter Hall. This houses a 9-inch refractor. The general student night is Fridays 8:00-9:00 p.m., clear nights only! This is a simple telescope to use and students (you!) can be checked out to observe with it. Please see me for further information. You may also view the Painter Hall Telescope Handbook online at: http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/students/painterbook.html, which explains the check-out procedure and the use of the telescope.

Perhaps one of your reasons for taking AST 301 is that you have sensed through the media that exciting discoveries are made on an almost daily basis. That’s true! One reason for this golden age of astronomy is the availability of wonderful new telescopes; very large telescopes here on Earth and in space. Access to unprecedented computing facilities is leading to greater understanding of observations both new and old.

While I hope to satisfy your curiosity about recent discoveries and quite possibly about a discovery or two announced in the course of the semester, my first goal is to discuss what can be learnt about the Universe from visual observations – no telescopes – just our eyes and brain. Remembers telescopes were not introduced into astronomy until early in the 17th century. Astronomy was then an old science. Ideas about the stars, the planets, comets, the Sun, and the Universe abounded – some were correct and some were incorrect. My approach is to discuss visual astronomy as though WE were tackling the topic afresh. Perhaps, you have heard of the Copernican revolution which overthrew the old idea that the planets and the Sun moved around a stationary Earth (the Earth was the center of the Universe) and replaced it with the idea that the planets orbited the Sun. I hope to convince you that the latter idea is not one that you, a non-science major, have to accept on faith but one that is demanded by rational explanation of visual observations of the planets and the Sun.

To extend understanding beyond what can be gleaned from visual astronomy, we need to obtain more detailed views of what is up there in the sky. In short, we need telescopes and what can be learnt by analyzing the light they collect will form the second principal segment of the syllabus.

Then, we’ll discuss the life and death of stars, the galaxies, and the form of the Universe as a whole for the remaining two-thirds of the semester. It is in this segment that recent discoveries will be discussed. Although there are parts of our discussion of stars, galaxies, and the Universe that you will have to take on faith (there are parts that I do!), much can be understood by us all with little effort. This is not a course in which memorization plays a very large part. With relatively few simple ideas, much can be understood.

You may find the UT Astronomy Course Schedule for the Fall of 2015 here: https://www.as.utexas.edu/astronomy/education/courses.html

"Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be the slightest possible use to you in after life – save only this – that if you work hard and diligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not sole purpose of education"

J.A. Smith
Professor of Moral Philosophy
University of Oxford, 1914.

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising that anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

J.B.S. Haldane (1892 – 1964)

Schedule

10 September 2015
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