Syllabi
Introduction to Astronomy
-
Overview: Historical Importance and Present-day Relevance
- Thought Experiment: Using Astronomy Knowledge to Survive on a Deserted Island
- Celestial Navigation
- Timekeeping
- Harvesting Resources in Sync with Cycles and Seasons
- Electromagnetic Spectrum
- Interaction of Light and Matter
- Light as a Wave and Particle
- Reflection, Refraction, and Diffraction
- Absorption and Emission
- Scattering, Interference, and Polarization
- Mapping the Sky
- The Sun
- Stars
- Color of Stars
- Spectral Types
- Formation and Evolution Models
- Stellar Atmosphere Models
- References
- article: Size of the Sun
- review: Theory of star formation, 2007
- review: Star formation in molecular clouds
- review: Formation and early evolution of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs
- review: Observations of brown dwarfs, 2000
- review: Stellar pulsations across HR diagram, 1995
- code: star formation simulation
- Solar System: In-situ Observations
- Mars Curiosity and Perseverance Rovers
- Juno Mission to Jupiter
- Cassini Mission to Saturn
- New Horizon Mission to Pluto
- Voyager Space Probe Missions to Interstellar Space
- References
- Earth: Looking Up and Looking Down
- Earth Observation: Copernicus Program
- Living, Breathing World: Google Earth timelapse
- Planets
- Structure: Core, Atmosphere
- Formation: N-body using REBOUND
- Evolution: Radius, Atmosphere, Orbit
- Exoplanets
- Detection
- Statistics
- Surprising Discoveries
- Astrobiology
- Supernovae, Black Holes, Neutron Stars, White Dwarfs, Pulsars, Magnetars, AGNs, GRBs, FRBs, and Gravitational Waves
- review: Most luminous supernovae
- review: Coevolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes
- review: Masses, radii, and the equation of state of neutron stars
- review: Neutron star merger
- review: Cool white dwarfs, 2003
- review: Unified model of Active Galactic Nuclei
- review: Fast Radio Burts: extragalactic enigma
- review: Gamma-Ray Burts afterglows, 2000
- review: Mergers and gravitational waves
- Milky Way
- Galaxy: Structure, Formation, and Evolution
- Cosmology
- Structure: Flat, Curved, Open, or Closed?
- Composition: Matter, Dark Matter, Dark Energy
- Formation: Cosmic Microwave Radiation and the Big Bang
- Evolution: Hubble’s Experiment and the Expanding Universe
References
Astronomical Observation and Data Analysis
- Atmospheric Windows: In which wavelengths best to observe what target?
- Blackbody Radiation
- Earth’s Atmosphere
- Science Goals: What and Why to observe
- Planning: How to observe the target
- Ground-based and Space-based Observations
- Observing Constraints
- Where is it? Coordinates
- Is it observable tonight? Rising and Setting Times
- North and South Hemisphere
- Weather: Cloud, Humidity, Turbulence
- Moon
- Satellites Trails
- Signal-to-Noise
- Exposure Time
- Filters
- Engineering: Science vs Cost
- Telescope Design and Operation
- Tracking and Auto-guiding
- Instrumentation
- From Analog to Digital: Photographic Plates and CCD
- Pixel Sensitivity
- Pixel Scale
- Field-of-View
- Total Telescope-Instrument Throughput
- Telescope Design and Operation
- Data Reduction with Astropy
- Dark Current: Dark Frame Subtraction
- Flat Field: Flat Frame Division
- Background Subtraction
- Bad/Hot Pixels
- Image alignment/registration
- Open datasets
- Plate-solving with Astrometry.net
- World Coordinate System (WCS)
- Photometry with Photutils
- Aperture Photometry
- Optimizing Aperture Size and Shape
- PSF Photometry
- Treatment of Outliers
- Weather: Cloud, Humidity, Turbulence
- Everything Else Unaccounted for (Systematics)
- Saturation
- Cosmic Rays
- Aperture Photometry
- Barycentric Time Correction (MJD to BJD Conversion)
- Light Travel Time Delay
- Transit Modeling
- Basic Model
- Pytransit
- Starry
- Parameterization
- Transforms
- Quadratic Limb Darkening: u1, u2 -> q1, q2 (Kipping+2016)
- Impact Parameter and Rp/Rs (Espinosa+2018)
- Stellar Density
- Basic Model
- Period Search, Periodogram
- BLS
- TLS
- (Generalized) Lomb-Scargle
- Spectroscopy using specutils
- Cross-correlation
- RV Modeling
- Basic Model
- Parameterization
- Joint RV+Transit Modeling
References
- lab demo: Optics
- lecture series: Astronomical Techniques by Chris Mihos
- database: NASA exoplanet archive
- book: Experimental astrophysics
- review: Reference frames in Astronomy, 1999
- Astropy’s CCD guide
- Jason Kendall’s course
- Growth Astronomy School
- review: Standard photometric systems
- review: Digital image reconstruction
- book: Numerical Python in A&A, Springer
- lecture series: Introduction to Computer Science & Programming with Python
Algorithms: Fast, Numerically Stable, Closed-form Solutions
- Python Basics
- Version Control with Git and GitHub
- Reproducible research with
showyourwork - Probability Distributions
- Sympy: Analytic
- Bayesian vs Frequentist Statistics
- Fitting Models to Data
- Linear Algebra
- Maximum Likelihood
- Optimization
- Gradient-free, scipy.optimize.solve
- Autodiff using jax
- Monte Carlo Methods
- Propagation of Uncertainties
- Sampling
- MCMC
- Nested Sampling
- Convergence Tests
- Reporting Results
- Posteriors vs Point Estimates
- Percentiles
- Visualization
- Corner Plot
- Posteriors
- Mixture Models
- Gaussian Process Regression
- Hierarchical Modeling
- Machine Learning
References
- lecture series: Statistics & Machine Learning in Astronomy
- lecture series: Fundamentals of statistics
- lecture series: Introduction to probability
- lecture series: Stochastic processes
- lecture notes: Astrostatistics
- review: MCMC methods for Bayesian data analysis in Astronomy
- lecture series: Metaprogramming
- lecture series: Mathematical methods
Miscellaneous readings
- Astronomical reach of fundamental physics by Burrows & Ostriker
- What made Apollo a success by George Low
General references
- lecture notes by Mitch Richmond
- lecture series by Richard Wolfson
- Science Talks @ Google
- Annual review of A&A
- Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
- review: Best practices in Astronomy education
- book: Astronomy education