Class Time: TTh 10:35 - 11:50 Class Room: 541 Davey Lab
Professor: Robin Ciardullo Office: 519 Davey Lab
Office Hours: TTh 1:30-3:00 or any other time Zoom Address: https://psu.zoom.us/j/3404085003
e-mail: rbc@astro.psu.edu Web page: https://sites.google.com/psu.edu/robin-ciardullo/teaching/astro-480
TA: Gooderham McCormick (Office Hours Monday 4:00 - 6:00 in room 532 Davey or by zoom at https://psu.zoom.us/j/92195002736 )
"Nebulae, Galaxies, and Cosmology" covers a lot of ground. This course will cover various aspects of these topics, and attempt to provide context for some of the current research in the fields.
Your grade will be based on:
Class Participation: 10%
Homework: 40%
Exams: 25%
Paper/Science Proposal: 25%
Class participation will count as 10% of the grade. All the slides, movies, and derivations, etc., will be available on the class web-site,and you should definitely use them to guide your studies. But there is no substitute for hearing the material presented in class and participating in the discussions. The class is small enough that I will know if you're not in class.
Your performance on homework problems will be 40% of the grade. Problem sets will be assigned (roughly) once a week. Science is a collaborative discipline, so you are encouraged to work with other students on these problem sets. However, your writeups must be expressed in your own words and not shared with other members of the class. Late homework will be penalized with a 10% deduction in points for each day past the due date. Please DO NOT start the homework the night before it's due!! Contact me and ask me for help if you are stuck on any problems. That's what I'm here for!
Your combined score on the midterm exam and the final exam (which will be twice as long, and therefore count twice as much), will comprise 25% of your grade. These exams will be open notes. More details about the exact structure of the tests will be given in class.
The final 25% of your grade will be based on a final project, which consists of a short paper and science proposal. Complete information about what this entails can be found elsewhere on the Canvas site. Do not wait until the end of the semester to start this project. Doing so will lead to disaster!
Extragalactic astronomy and cosmology are very active fields of research. Textbooks generally don't stay relevant for very long. Because of this, and because the topics for this class are so varied (i.e., nebular physics, extragalactic astronomy, and cosmology), there is no single textbook for the class. Which is fine, since most times you'll find the class notes to be comprehensive enough to serve as their own text. Suggested readings and additional references will be included in the class notes. As a starting point, Peter Schneider's book Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology may be useful, but only as a rough guide. You can access this book from any Penn State computer (or via a VPN connection) at http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-540-33175-9 .
The class slides will be posted before each lecture. You may find it useful to have this material in front of you during class, and then take notes on the notes. (On occasion -- when typos, ambiguities, and other errors are found, these notes will be updated after class.) These notes will be critical to your being able to do the homework and take the open-note tests.
Outline of Class
I. Preliminaries
II. Cosmological Framework
III. Galaxies
IV. Cosmic Distances and the Hubble Constant
V. Emission Lines Sources and their Physics
VI. Galaxy Clusters and their Masses
VII. Large Scale Structure
VIII. The High-Redshift Universe
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