Niel Brandt's Astronomy 130 Page: Black Holes in the Universe

Syllabus, schedule, and integrity policy:

• Syllabus
• Reading assignments and basic course schedule
• Detailed list of course topics - useful study guide
• Department integrity policy and college integrity policy - These apply in this course!

• Gravity's Fatal Attraction: Black Holes in the Universe - Begelman & Rees
• Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy - Thorne

• Einstein's Unfinished Symphony - Bartusiak
• Black Holes - Couper & Henbest
• Prisons of Light: Black Holes - Ferguson
• A Brief History of Time - Hawking
• The Biggest Bangs - Katz
• Black Holes - Luminet
• The Lighter Side of Gravity - Narlikar
• Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide - Pickover
• Flash! The Hunt for the Biggest Explosions in the Universe - Schilling
• The Life of the Cosmos - Smolin
• A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime - Wheeler
• Cosmic Catastrophes: Supernovae, Gamma-Ray Bursts, and Adventures in Hyperspace - Wheeler
• Einstein's Universe: Gravity at Work and Play - Zee

• Some ideas for paper topics (with useful references to get started)
• List of students in the class (useful for finding partners)
• Honors option possibilities

• Student questions from Astro 130
• Relativity FAQ 1
• Black hole FAQ 1
• Black hole FAQ 2

• Relevant PowerPoint files for some of the lectures
• Acrobat Reader - Needed to view the PDF files given below
• Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton
• The Michelson-Morley experiment
• Albert Einstein
• Arthur Eddington
• Gravitational lensing example
• Gravitational lensing examples
• The `rubber sheet' analogy for spacetime
• Karl Schwarzschild
• Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
• Eta Carinae: A star near the end of its life
• Sirius B and the Crab Pulsar
• Virtual trips to black holes and neutron stars
• Relativistic effects upon the appearance of a black hole and accretion disk
• Class overheads on gamma-ray bursts
• Schematic diagram of a gamma-ray burst
• Article on gamma-ray bursts by Peter Meszaros
• Is Eta Carinae a threat to life?
• Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer WWW page
• Infrared images of the stars near the Galactic center 1
• Infrared images of the stars near the Galactic center 2
• Radio image of the Galactic center region
• Galactic center newsletter - technical but many great pictures
• Stellar motions near the black hole at the Galactic center #1
• Stellar motions near the black hole at the Galactic center #2
• Stellar motions near the black hole at the Galactic center #3
• Roy Kerr and Roger Penrose
• Images of active galactic nuclei
• Active galaxy review images
• Images of radio galaxies and quasars
• Movie of an accretion disk in an active galaxy
• X-raying active galaxies both near and far
• Detailed studies of jet formation in the radio galaxy 3C120
• M87 and the Virgo Cluster
• Radio images of the radio galaxy M87
• Schematic of jet formation
• The Blandford-Znajek process
• The spectrum of a typical star
• The black hole mass versus galaxy bulge properties
• Sources of electromagnetic and gravitational wave radiation
• Merging black holes 1
• Merging black holes 2
• 3C75: Prelude to a supermassive black hole binary?
• Active galaxy jets indicating black hole mergers
• LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
• LISA: Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• Can naked singularities exist in nature?

• Mitch Begelman
• Stephen Hawking
• Martin Rees
• Kip Thorne

• Mitch Begelman's black holes course
• Dan Watson's black holes course