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The Jewel Box (NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Chris Sneden

RLM 15.312A · (512) 471-1349 [office] 343-0004 [home] · email

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Homework, and your approach to it? The homework sets are the keys to what I want to get done in this course. I intend to be deliberately vague in some of the assignments. I admit this to be a totally deliberate ploy. Real astronomical research usually does not admit cookbook solutions to interesting problems, and I want you to get used to that. Such an approach is also a signal on my part that I encourage interactions with you outside class. Feel free to discuss with me the course material, problem sets, or any other astronomical topic that come to mind. On the first page I give the formal office hours, but you of course may set up appointments with me at other rational times of day. Notice also that I give my work number, email address, and my home phone number. I greatly prefer contact in person or a phone call; emails to me can get deeply buried. I would not give out my home phone number if I did not expect calls in the evening whenever you need to. (It is true that we are the only Snedens in the Austin telephone directory.) I want to help you do well in this course, but I need you to make contact! Don't be shy: remember that the truly stupid question is the unasked one.

Caveat Emptor! I finish with two warnings, one applicable to all faculty members here and one specic to me. First, in this department you deal with professional astronomers. The good part is that you get very close to current research, and that can be very exciting. The bad part is that we tend to travel a lot (most obviously to observatories in remote and exotic locales), and I will need to excuse myself from class a couple of times during the semester. At present I have a trip scheduled for October 22-25 (missing class October 23), and one or two other trips that are unknown now might occur. A substitute lecturer will pinch-hit for me in class on those occasions. Second, I am currently Letters Editor of The Astrophysical Journal. This means that inevitably I am pulled in many different teaching/service/research directions simultaneously, and frankly I am very busy. However, this should not become your problem! I expect you to work in this class, and you should expect no less of me. Do not feel the slightest hesitation in pushing me to make time for you outside of class; politely in the beginning, but more firmly if I do not respond. Your interaction in this course can only aid your understanding.

Preliminary Course Outline (subject to revision)

1. Introduction and Vital Observational Statistics of Stars: positions, distances, magni- tudes, etc.

2. The Basic Quantities of Radiation: intensity, flux, blackbodies

3. Interpreting Stellar Magnitudes: luminosity & effective temperature; stellar photometry & color indices; effects of the Earth's atmosphere

4. The Heart of Observational Stellar Physics: spectroscopy; stellar spectral types; excitation & ionization equilibria; the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

5. Further Extractions from Spectroscopy: radial velocity & proper motion; interstellar extinction; binary stars & the measurement of stellar masses; the Mass-Luminosity relation

6. Variable Stars: Cepheids, RR Lyraes, Long-Period Variables; white dwarf pulsators; close binary systems (mass-exchange & contact binaries; cataclysmic variables; novae; etc.)

7. Star Clusters: young clusters/pre-MS evolution; Main Sequence turnoffs & cluster ages; globular clusters; etc.

8. (as time permits) Stellar Atmospheres: radiative transfer; basic principles of model atmospheres; spectral lines & abundance determinations.

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