AST 3047 TOPIC LIST 1



  1. celestial sphere: celestial poles and equator; ecliptic; equinoxes and solstices; equatorial and ecliptic coordinates -- definitions, units
  2. observer's sky: horizon, zenith, cardinal points, celestial meridian; altazimuth coordinates -- definitions, units; altitude of celestial pole and latitude; altazimuth mounting
  3. telescope performance: light-gathering power, resolution, scale or image size, magnification, and image brightness of an extended source; how these depend on aperture, focal lengths
  4. Keplerian or astronomical refractor: design, advantages and disadvantages compared to Galilean
  5. aberrations: chromatic and spherical, coma
  6. reflector: Newtonian, Gregorian, Cassegrain, Herschelian and prime focus; early mirror composition and problem
  7. Paris and Greenwich Observatories: purpose; early instruments -- transit telescope, mural quadrant, sextant
  8. Early instruments -- transit telescope, mural quadrant, sextant, sidereal clock
  9. English instrument builders: Sharp (engraved scales), Graham (widespread), John Dollond (achromatic objective), Ramsden (machine for angular scales, English equatorial mounting); reasons for 18th cent. supremacy
  10. Later instruments: zenith sector, heliometer, filar micrometer, transit or meridian circle, vertical circle -- including uses
  11. Joseph Fraunhofer: research on lenses, solar spectrum; instruments; German equatorial mounting, clock drive
  12. Alvan Clark & Sons: large refractors, esp. largest
  13. Newton: Laws of Motion, Law of Universal Gravitation, gravitational two-body problem (orbits, relative and center-of-mass; semimajor axis and eccentricity, orbital angular momentum and speed in orbit; revised Harmonic Law), tidal forces and tides, oblateness, regression of Moon's nodes and precession
  14. Expeditions to measure oblateness: Bouguer and La Condamine, Maupertuis
  15. Halley's Comet: periodic, prediction of return by Clairaut and Mme Lepaute
  16. English disadvantage in celestial mechanics: reason
  17. Lunar theory: advance of apogee problem (Clairaut), secular acceleration (Laplace); Mayer's semi-empirical theory for "Moon-clock"
  18. Planetary theory: stability of Solar System, "Great Inequality" (Lagrange, Laplace)
  19. Laplace: Treatise on Celestial Mechanics; Exposition of the World System and nebular hypothesis (Kant ind.); approximate date