The Heavens and the Earth

PHY 101: Introduction to Astronomy

Week 13

Thanksgiving break; no class on Thursday or Friday.

Read: A new theory of gravity (Chap. 23). We'll spend some time on this reading from Einstein on Monday, and then move on to some light reading from Gamow's Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland for Wednesday.

Quiz: Monday. Covers Leavitt and Slipher.

Homework exercises: Thanksgiving break starting Thursday; no homework.

Laboratory exercises: This week, we will do a lab experiment on Shadow mechanics . Scan and submit your lab book pages describing your experimental observations an data by noon Monday week 14.

A new theory of gravity (1 video):

Euclid, Gauss, and Mercury's orbit (no videos yet…):

A finite universe with no boundary (no videos yet…):

Intro. to Astronomy

Return to course home page.

Course syllabus

What is our place in the universe? This course provides an introduction to the sciences of astronomy and cosmology. The required textbook is A Student's Guide Through the Great Physics Texts, Volume 1: The Heavens and the Earth

Topics include: identifying stars and planets in the night sky, the historical development of astronomy, celestial coordinate systems, astronomical instruments, the Copernican revolution, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, Newton's law of universal gravitation, stellar parallax, galactic redshifts, Hubble’s law, and modern cosmology.

This website will lead you, week-by-week, through Volume 1 of A Student's Guide using short videos and homework assignments. Each video has a code (in parentheses) that indicates the book volume, chapter, and lecture number. Click is the link for Week 1 to get you started!

PHY 101: Introduction to Astronomy meets in S113 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00 - 9:50.

PHY 105: Astronomy Laboratory meets in room S115 every Monday evening from 7:00 - 9:50 pm. Click here to download a free copy of the workbook we will be using for lab.

Weekly Homework assignments are due at noon on Saturdays. Upload a scanned copy of your homework to the PHY 101 canvass portal.

Weekly Lab Reports are due by noon on Mondays. Upload a scanned copy of the relevant pages in your observation book to the PHY 105 course portal.

Weekly Quizzes are on (almost every) Monday during the class period.

Final exam: A comprehensive final exam will be held during finals week.

Office Hrs: MWF 8:00 - 9:00 am and TR 12:30 - 2:00 pm

Download Stellarium Software to do stargazing on your desktop or mobile device. If you have internet access, you can also use Stellarium-web Online

Subscribe to Earthsky to get daily updates of what's in the sky.

Check out visibility of planets this semester at Space.com.

Generate a sky calendar using this nasa website.

Looking to buy a telescope? Space.com has some good recommendations. Check out this website.

Milwaukee Clearsky Chart predicts when our city will have good weather for astronomical observing.

Logger Pro 3.15 Download for Wndows 10, 8.1, 7, and for macOS 10.14, 10.13, 10.12, 10.11, 10.10. For more details on how to download and install Logger Pro click here.