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Fall 2004

ASTR195: Observational Astronomy

Credit Hours: 3
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor required.
Typically offered: Fall

This course provides a "hands-on" introduction to observational astronomy intended for liberal arts students at the freshman and sophomore level. High school mathematics is assumed, but otherwise there are no formal prerequisites. The course objective is to teach how we know what we know about the universe. The course is set up with two lectures and one evening laboratory per week. Not all of the evening sessions will be used. Planned exercises include five or six observational labs (star gazing with binoculars and small telescopes, telescopic observations and CCD imaging of star clusters, nebulae, and the planets, solar observations , radio observations of the Milky Way Galaxy), plus a selection of exercises from the following: experiments in navigating by the stars; construction and use of simple instruments such as optical spectroscopes, and sun dials; laboratory spectroscopy; experiments in planetary cratering; collection and study of micrometeorites; computer simulations of the orbits of planets and their satellites and cosmological explorations using data from the Hubble Space Telescope available on the Web.

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