Observational Astronomy (308)

These notes are brief summaries and links for the in-class content for the Monday class meetings of the Fall Semester 2019.

Week 1 (August 19)

• Orientation to the class
• Purpose, activities, outcomes
• Visiting the observatory
• Remote observing
• Semester projects
• Facilities and research
• On-line with Mt. Kent live session

Week 2 (August 26)

• What we observe
  • Position and celestial coordinates
  • Flux and magnitude
• What we infer
  • Distance
  • Size
  • Luminosity
  • Composition
  • Evolution
• Useful tools for access to data
  • Stellarium
  • Simbad
  • Aladin

Week 3 (September 2)

• Labor Day holiday

Week 4 (September 9)

• Telescopes
  • Basic concepts of optical telescope design
  • Light gathering function
  • Focal plane scale
  • Angular resolution and point spread function
  • Detectors and filters

• Visit to the Planetarium
  • Solar projection telescope
  • Solar imaging in hydrogen alpha light

Week 5 (September 15)

• Telescopes continued from last week as needed

• AstroImageJ
  • Installation
  • Use with simple images
  • Photometry
  • Advanced concepts