Astronomy 1G

Astronomy 1G was a twenty credit pre-Honours course taught in second semester, intended for a broad range of physical sciences students. It was taught in alternate years, sandwiched with Astronomy 1S. A1S focused on stars and planets, and A1G on galaxies and cosmology. It was last taught in Spring 2012; Astronomy 1S was last taught in Spring 2013. For the 2013/14 academic we have restructured our pre-Honours astronomy teaching. There are two first year courses (Discovering Astronomy, and Astrobiology) and a new second year course, Introductory Astrophysics. This page is just a repository for the components of the course taught by me.

Spring 2012 version

The Course Organiser was Catherine Heymans. The material was taught by Catherine, myself, and Ken Rice.

Structure of Course

The course came in 5 modules of 6 lectures each :

The notes from my sections are linked below

The Science of Astronomy

Lecture 1-1 : Principles of Astronomical Science; Whirlwind Tour of the Universe
Lecture 1-2 : Gravity and Motion
Lecture 1-3 : Radiation and Matter
Lecture 1-4 : Astrophysical Spectra
Lecture 1-5 : Distances and Magnitudes
Lecture 1-6 : Properties of the Stars

The Milky Way and other galaxies

Lecture 2-1 : Overview of the Milky Way
Lecture 2-2 : Stellar Populations in the Milky Way
Lecture 2-3 : Gas, dust, and dark matter in the Milky Way
Lecture 2-4 : Size, dynamics, and history of the Milky Way
Lecture 2-5 : Other galaxies : types, shapes, and contents
Lecture 2-6 : Dynamics and masses : first clues to galaxy formation

Galaxies at Large

Lecture 4-1 : Cosmography : the geography and demography of galaxies
Lecture 4-2 : Clustering of galaxies
Lecture 4-3 : Galaxy distances and the Hubble flow
Lecture 4-4 : Collisions and mergers
Lecture 4-5 : Distant galaxies and quasars
Lecture 4-6 : The formation of galaxies

2010 version