Teaching: Astronomy 160

Description: Handouts and resources developed for the lab sections of Astronomy 160.
Handouts: Handouts presented below are derived from the University of Michigan Astronomy Online Labs site, with the following changes:
  • Repetitive data taking has been cut down.
  • The handouts are no longer in the form of worksheets.
  • Error analysis has been added in many places.
Goals: Astronomy 160 students have had first-semester Calculus and are generally science concentrators, and thus need to acquire career research skills:
  • Reworking the labs from worksheets to handouts requires them to keep a lab notebook and develop data-taking and record-keeping skills.

  • The inclusion of error analysis introduces them to a subject of great importance to any scientist.

  • I required students to turn in short, typed reports of every experiment, forcing them to learn to use word-processing, graphing, and drawing programs that will later be of use in scientific writing.

Useful Links:

CTools
About Plagiarism
Astronomy Online Labs
Tonight's Sky
Downloads:

Error Analysis (PDF)
Stellar Evolution Pics (PDF)

Handouts Master Document: PDF,  TeX

Syllabus: PDF         The Celestial Sphere: PDF         Intro to Error Analysis: PDF
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Spectroscopy: PDF         Moons of Jupiter and Least-Squares Fit: PDF
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Refracting Telescopes: PDF         Error Propagation: PDF         Stellar Evolution PDF
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Stellar Structure: PDF         The Crab Nebula: PDF
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Standard Deviation: PDF Galactic Star Clusters: PDF         General Error
Propagation: PDF
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