Astronomy 480

Nebulae Galaxies and Cosmology

Instructor: Caryl Gronwall

Office: 417B Davey, Office Hours: Monday & Thursday 2:30 -- 3:30 p.m. or whenever you can find me!

Texts:
Galaxies in the Universe by Sparke and Gallagher
An Introduction to Modern Cosmology by Liddle

Note both books have substantial errata, which are listed on the web pages for the books.

Additional Reading:
An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, by Carroll & Ostlie. We will refer to the "big orange book" for some background reading.

Galactic Astronomy by Binney & Merrifield (1998) and the previous edition by Mihalas & Binney (1981). This is the classic graduate text in the field.

Modern Cosmology by Dodelson. Graduate level book on cosmology.

Galaxies and Galactic Structure by Elmegreen. This is an undergraduate text at a somewhat lower level than Sparke & Gallagher but covers some topics that Sparke & Gallagher doesn't.

Modern Cosmological Observations and Problems by Bothun. Somewhat out of date, but presents a nice overview of observational cosmology.

These books, along with the required texts will be on reserve in the Science Library.

Course Syllabus in PDF format.

Astronomy Department Integrity Policy

Lectures in PDF format

Lecture 1 Monday, Jan 14, History of our understanding of the Milky Way and other Galaxies

• Reading: Chapter 25.1 in Carroll & Ostlie, Chapter 1.3 in Sparke & Gallagher

Lecture 2 Wednesday, Jan 16, Morphological Classification, Galaxy Catalogs
Lecture 3 Friday, Jan 18, Overview of Galaxy Properties, Galactic coordinates, Photometry
Lecture 4 Wednesday, Jan 23, Galaxy photometry, extinction, luminosity functions
Lecture 5 Friday, Jan 25, Ellipticals

• Reading Chapter 6 in Sparke & Gallagher

Lecture 6 Monday, Jan 28, More ellipticals
Lecture 7 Wednesday, Jan 30, Even more ellipticals!
Lecture 8 Friday, Feb 1, Spirals

• Reading Chapter 5 in Sparke & Gallather

Lecture 9 Monday, Feb 4, More spirals
Lecture 10 Wednesday, Feb 6, Even more spirals!
Lecture 11 Friday, Feb 8, Finishing up on spirals, dwarf galaxies.
Lecture 12 Monday, Feb 11, Dwarf galaxies

• Reading Chapter 4.1.3 & 4.4 in Sparke & Gallagher (dwarf galaxies in the Local Group)

Lecture 13 Wednesday, Feb 13, Groups of Galaxies, Dynamical Friction

• Reading Chapter 7.1 (Groups & Mergers) in Sparke & Gallagher
  

Lecture 14 Friday, Feb 15, Galaxy Interactions & Tidal Stripping

• Reading Chapter 4.1.4 (Tidal Stripping) in Sparke & Gallagher.
• Check here and here and here for some of the movies shown in class.

Lecture 15 Monday, Feb 18, Clusters of Galaxies

• Reading Chapter 7.2 in Sparke & Gallagher

Lecture 16 Wednesday, Feb 20, More clusters of Galaxies

Lecture 17 Friday, Feb 22, Galaxy Clusters & Gravitational Lensing

• Reading Chapter 7.4 in Sparke & Gallagher
• Some ram pressure stripping and galaxy harassment movies can be found here

Lecture 18 Monday, Feb 25, Gravitational Lensing & Active Galactic Nuclei

• Reading Chapter 9.1 in Sparke & Gallagher

Lecture 19 Wednesday, Feb 27, Active Galactic Nuclei
Lecture 20 Friday, Feb 29, Active Galactic Nuclei & Emission-Line Spectroscopy

• Reading 9.2.3 (Superluminal motion) in Sparke & Gallagher

Lecture 21 Monday, March 3, Galaxy Evolution

• Reading 8.3.2, 9.3 & 9.4 in Sparke & Gallagher

Wednesday, March 5, Midterm Exam
Lecture 22 Friday, March 7, Galaxy Evolution
Lecutre 23 Monday, March 17, Finishing up Galaxy Evolution
Lecture 24 Wednesday, March 19, Intro to Cosmology

• Sections 1.4 & 8.2 in Sparke & Gallagher
• Chapter 1-5 in Liddle
• Also see Ch. 29 in Carroll & Ostlie

Lecture 25 Friday, March 21, Intro to Cosmology
Lecture 26 Monday, March 24, Intro to Cosmolgy & the Age of the Universe

• Chapter 6-8 & Advanced Topic 2 in Liddle

Lecture 27 Wednesday, March 26, Age of the Universe
Lecture 28 Friday, March 28, Extragalactic Distance Scale

• Chapter 27.1 in Carroll & Ostlie
• See the reviews by Jensen et al. (2003) here (PDF file) and by Jacoby et al. (1992) here (PDF file).
• Also, Chapter 2 in Bothun (on reserve in Science Library).
• Parts of Sections 2.1 & 2.2 in Sparke and Gallagher discuss parallax, main sequence fitting, and RR Lyraes. Section 4.1.2 discusses Cepheids and RR Lyraes. Pages 316-318 discuss surface brightness fluctuations.
• John Huchra's Hubble Constant page.

Lecture 29 Monday, March 31, Extragalactic Distance Scale

Lecture 30 Wednesday, April 2, Extragalactic Distance Scale & Evidence for a Cosmological Constant from Type Ia SN

• See the Supernova Cosmology Project and High-Z Supernova Search web pages. There is a good review of the recent results from both teams here (PDF file).
  

Lecture 31 Friday, April 4, Large Scale Structure

• Ch. 8.1 in Sparke & Gallagher and Advanced Topics 5.1 - 5.3 in Liddle
  
• There are also the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey web pages.

Lecture 32 Monday, April 7, Dark Matter

• Chapter 9 in Liddle
• For fun listen to the Dark Matter Rap (mp3) by David Weinberg at Ohio State University. You can read the lyrics here.

Lecture 33 Wednesday, April 9, Finish up Dark Matter, Inflation, and the Cosmic Microwave Background

• Chapters 10 & 13 in Liddle, also Advanced Topic 5.4
• Ch. 29.2 & 30.1 in Carroll & Ostlie
  
• Also check out the CMB tutorial from Wayne Hu, and other useful links on his CMB physics page.
  
• Finally, there are the COBE and WMAP home pages!
  

Lecture 34 Friday, April 11, Finish up CMB, Early Universe & Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
(Note I have fixed the anti-neutrino symbols!)

• Chapters 11 & 12 in Liddle
• Ch 1.5 in Sparke & Gallagher
  
• Ch. 29.2 in Carroll & Ostlie
  

Lecture 35 Monday, April 14, Finish BBN, Hierarchical Structure Formation

• Ch 8.4 & 8.5 in Sparke & Gallagher
  
• Advanced Topic 5.5 in Liddle
  
• Ch. 30.2 in Carroll & Ostlie
  
• Check out some simulations here, also there are some nice movie of the simulations here.

Lecture 36 Wednesday, April 16, Hierarchical Structure & Galaxy Formation

• Ch 4.3 in Sparke & Gallagher
  
• Check out some movies here and here.

Problem Set 3

Java Applets from Case Western Reserve University

Files for Problem Set 1

• Globular Cluster Data File for Problem 2
• Problem 4: Classify the following galaxies by Revised Hubble Type (as defined by Sandage in the Hubble Atlas found in the reading room). You will find looking at the Hubble Atlas for prototypes very helpful and you will probably want to read the introduction to the Hubble Atalas as well. Give a brief, one line explanation for your type for each galaxy.
  • Galaxy 1
  • Galaxy 2
  • Galaxy 3
  • Galaxy 4
  • Galaxy 5
  • Galaxy 6
  • Galaxy 7
  • Galaxy 8
  • Galaxy 9
  • Galaxy 10
  • Galaxy 11
• Now that you're a galaxy classification expert, you can classify some galaxies at the Galaxy Zoo!

Useful Links

Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial

Check out the Ultra Deep Field

Astrophysical Data System
Astro-ph preprint server
Annual Reviews
Steinn's LaTeX primer
AASTeX Package
The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
More on the Shapley-Curtis Debate
Check here for summer research opportunities.