Welcome to ASTRONOMY online!. Even though this is an online course, you'll note that I will not dwell much on the technology. It should be transparent to the curriculum. I want to focus on Astronomy (albeit we will have to use the internet technology to engage ourselves in this venture.)This course attempts to do a whole lot more than just fill a slot in the curriculum. It will (note that I said will, not should) provide you with an introduction to one of the most exciting subjects that you will encounter during your entire academic career. Not only is the material itself exciting, but this particular offering of the course online, makes it possible to do this from the comfort of your living room (or wherever your home computer may be set up. Indeed, some people do it from Starbuck's) You can be sitting there in slippers and sipping a coke (or whatever kind of beverage pleases you.) This course will be exciting not just from the perspective of content knowledge and the experiential activities you'll be engaging in but also from that of pedagogy and how this course is taught. It will, in a sense, be radical from both perspectives! You will be introduced not only to the fascinating discoveries in our very own solar system, but beyond that to the limits of our galaxy and the bounds of the universe. We will explore, thanks to the latest space probes (and some information is coming in daily, details we could only have dreamed of) on the planets and their satellites. We will extend our studies to the exotic, including black holes and quasars and pulsars and what cosmology and relativity tell us about the origin and the ultimate destiny of the universe. All this will almost be meaningless without real relevance to our fragile Earth, the place we live and to ourselves and how we fit into the cosmos. This course should be anything but boring!
You will learn an enormous amount of science. Astronomy differs from most sciences in that we are not able to test our hypotheses in the laboratory as we might in a traditonal physics or chemistry course. All the information about the stars, galaxies and the universe itself comes to us through tiny beams of light. We must study these beams of light and from them determine the chemical makeup of objects, their thermal and physical properties and predict their evolution and life cycle. Inference from the known physical processes and the acquired data is indeed our foremost tool. It is exciting too. No where on earth can we create vacuums like exist in outer space. No laboratory can reproduce the temperatures and pressures that take place in stellar interiors. We can only describe in theory the kinds of relativistically degenerate states of matter that make up while dwarfs and neutron stars.
Our studies do not attempt to make scientists out of you. Science so often is avoided (if possible) in many programs. And frequently students who have to take science (eg. a science requirement) will take something they had success with before. Intellectually there is absolutely no reason anyone enrolled in this college cannot be successful in this class. We need to satisfy our curiosities and try to pull together the information that makes this the cogent subject that it is. We will use basic scientific principles, usually without the cumbersome burden of excessive mathematics, to better understand the universe we live in. Recognize that the American public is, on the whole, scientifically illiterate, beseiged daily with a plethora of facts, some sense and some nonsense, all in the name of science. Hopefully, by completing this course, you will be better informed to be a better consumer (a sort of pragmatic reason) and a better citizen, capable of helping to determine public policy that affects our very future. But because this course is on-line, you will need a tremendous amount of discipline to learn the astronomy.
This is not to say that things will be excessively difficult. On the contrary, we find that teaching on-line allows us to articulate our objectives and teach specifically to them. We will use streaming video for our lectures. Understand that some of the lectures have been digitally recorded earlier, even in the winter, but the topical nature is correct, following our syllabus. To accomodate the slowest modem we break the lectures up into parts. The way we'll do this is to join a streaming video and then come together for interaction through Blackboard. The lectures will be found in Blackboard, and you can view them over and over again at any time (day or night) so in some ways this is better than a regular face to face class. The interaction as a group takes place in the Blackboard CHAT Room. I can also answer questions via e-mail so we'll be in touch pretty regularly this summer.
There is another important consideration. You will be exposed to a tremendous amount of material. But I am firmly convinced that, while you will understand better how the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe works, many of these details will become "foggy" with time. You will not, however, forget the first time you see the rings of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter. (Jupiter is just spectacular this summer and we have several students doing some research on signals they are retrieving from the giant planet. Last summer we went to Hawaii at the American Astronomical Society meeting where we presented a paper on this project) This course, in addition to everything else, is observationally based. I want you to see things you have not dreamed of. The heavens offer sights that will amaze you. Yes, we have a great observatory. Several prominent colleges in this state have copied our design and built in features we've recommended. We have a computer controlled 14" telescope that does a nice job of helping us see the heavens. However, because of the nature of the media for this course, you will not be scheduled to use it for observations. Instead you will build your own small telescope as part of the course and we are trying to remain true to keeping you from having to come to campus. If you have a small telescope or powerful binoculars, you may use those for your observing activities as well. Still, observing is a formal requirement of the course. Also, there are a number of indoor experiments you will do that can make astronomy more meaningful, like investigating the nature of light, spectra, how telescopes work and we've got some computer simulations that help you to better understand what astronomers do.
Our class, both the "lecture" (although we are eliminating lecture
in the traditional sense of the word and replacing it with Content ) and the "lab" (we
replace that with Observational Activities) are "taught" (this word
too should be replaced) online. The main source of content knowledge will be
the textbook in the traditional sense. We do offer a textbook for your use
so we can gather some specific information. But much of the information will
come from other sources, namely the multimedia forms used with the internet..Consequently,
you are expected to be online at least twice weekly and follow our learning
schedule. We also recognize that this course is intended to be observationally
based, in other words we expect to see with our own eyes things we've never
seen before. It forms a special foundation for this course. We cannot replace
that with the world wide web. But, we can supplement it for the Hubble Space
TelescopeHubble Space Telescope and other devices have given us images we could not have imagined.
We'll be looking at the NASA archives, JPL, the HST,the Galileo, Cassini probes,
etc. This kind of information won't be printed for a while. The available text
book is a paperback called Explorations: An Intro to Astronomy by Arny and
published by Dushkin/McGraw Hill. There is no addtional charge.for the Starry
Night Pro Planetarium Program 
packaged with your text. For the Labs and your
observational activities we will combine hands-on involvment in astronomy.
You will build a telescope, a spectroscope and a celestial sphere. But we will
concentrate on what we can do in the heavens and what we can see. That will
require combining the Starry Night Pro with the sky. We intend to supplement
this with streaming video directly from our college's telescope, real-time!
I am firmly convinced that if you read the assigned material in the paperback
text, use the online text as outlined, answering the questions, etc. and complete
the observational activities, you can't miss!
I have also been selected a NASA
Solar System Ambassador . 
I am
updated with the most current information about all the solar system probes
including Galileo, Cassini and the others. This information is something you
cannot get from a textbook and I will have it in class for you.
You'll need some kind of E-Mail account so we can send E-mail and keep in touch, etc. This is a MUST! We have to be able to communicate, not just you to me, but among the class as well. I will need your home E-Mail account, the one you will use most of the time, most likely the one from your internet provider.
Now, we can't do it all. You will be shown a few simple, straight forward techniques that work and will get the job done. Your instructor does not know them all. No one person does. It will be doable! Because this is so experimental (and with such a risk, we have to be prepared for the remote chance of failure too) our syllabus will be fluid and may change week to week. It will always be improved. In fact, we'll sort of develop it as we go along, collaboratively. Note, I said collaboratively, not cooperatively. This will be a very new way of doing things. We are still in a pilot program so I beg your patience. I will not ask of you more than you could reasonably be expected to do. Things will change as new information is available, new web pages on the internet and new NASA discoveries. You are getting the most up to date course possible. You should not print out the syllabus as things will change. You need to get in the habit of using it online in real time.
There are some opportunities for you. Yes, YOU! Occassionally we need and want student researchers to help us on observing runs to O'Brien (30" telescope at Marine, MN) and perhaps Mt Lemmon (Arizona) or WIRO in Wyoming. The department has a NASA grant to support some of these activities. Your imagination is about the limit, and then some. These opportunities will be discussed in class online and through E-Mail. Of course, you'll need to develop some skills first, but you will. With that in mind, let's go.:
WHAT YOU NEED:
Computer System: Access to a Pentium PC , sound card and speakers. We won't use everything to start with. You will need to establish connection with an internet service provider. Some of the files used are big (eg. video files that are 10 MB are not uncommon.)
Text book and Supplies: From the CSC Bookstore you'll need
to purchase the textbook, Explorations - An Introduction to Astronomy,
version 5. 
This version
includes the Starry Night Pro Software on a DVD. Additionally
the bookstore will stock a College Astronomy Kit, PS-13 which
includes: a Celestial Sphere, a Refracting Telescope and a Cardboard Spectrometer,
each in kit form. These will be used
in your laboratory activities. Both the text and lab kits have been ordered
and should be in shortly. (I believe a year ago the lab kit cost $22.) .
E-Mail Account: This is obvious to all of us. You certainly
have an account at the college, but I need to know your E-Mail address that
you access
most frequently. I not only will be sending you info about the course,
but also
will send you the latest updates when I get them. I will initially send
you e-mail through St. Kate's account and if you prefer another address,
simply let me know and I'll add it to the list. In any case, we do not want
to miss you.
Examinations: There will be three periodic exams and a final
exam. They will be online at Blackboard.com. I'll explain how to access them
in
a timely
fashion. I will need all the data about you first, so as soon as I get
a class list
with student ID, etc, I have set up your accounts. It is not there yet.
The exams will be done on-line and MUST be completed before class of
the day
they are listed.
The exams are multiple choice, on-line and typically take less than the
one hour allotted. The Final Exam will be two hours long, roughly one
hundred multiple choice questions. Questions for all exams are selected
randonly
by the computer
from a pool so no two people will get the same exam. Most students have
expressed
satisfaction with the testing.
GRADING
There will be Four major parts of this course used to determine your grade:
Content: There will be three periodic hour long examinations. They will generally be multiple choice tests. We call them "Opportunities to Excel!" A Final Exam will also be placed on-line as indicated in the schedule following. The Final Exam will be comprehensive over the entire course. All exams will have a generous window of opportunity during which they can be taken. Class time meetign together is not used for exams.
Observing and Related Activities: We are planning for
at least ten graded activities. I will detail these later. Three of these
will come from an observing journal
that you will keep, recording what you saw and when you saw it. There will
be some computer simulations.
Interactivity: I will award points for your interaction in class. I think we learn from interaction. It is understandable that you may miss a day here or there but you can still participate by looking up the archives, and participating in the on-line Discussion Board.
All labs and other materials turned in to me will be through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard. This way we do not tie up e-mail.
Because all three (the Periodic Exams, Final Exam, and LabActivities) of these areas are so important to measuring your learning, each will be weighted the same. i.e., for each of these (Periodic Exams, Final Exam, and Activities) areas you will receive a grade and the average of the combined grades will determine your final grade average. The advantage to this simple policy is obvious. It should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that it would be unwise to expect to get a good grade in the course while deficient in any one of the three parts.
The usual schedule
for the summer is rather aggressive under any circumstances. With only five weeks
in the summer program and two meetings per week things are rather compacted.
There is a lot to be done each week. The dates are merely guides, except
for
the exams. It means you have to be self-starting and independent. The required
material will have to be completed by testing time, three times during the term
and the final exam. What is laid out is more or less done so to pace yourself.
We will plan on meeting online Tuesday and Thursday evenings
of
each
week. 7:00 PM until we are done, probably 9:30 PM should give us enough time
to complete our work.
I will detail how to do this via E-Mail before the start of the class. This
means (the one you check all of the time) or I cannot contact
you.
This
is The
instructional material will be online at the days prescribed, in the appropriate
Block
of Instruction. Reading and computer assignments will be assigned online.
Laboratory Activities will be spread throughout the scheduled period to
fit into the class materials. Whatever you do, don't get behind in the
labs. I will not give an Incomplete for the course just because you got behind
in the labs. That is planning. The examinations will be typically be available
for a day or so but you can take it any time during that period.
(For example, we might have it available Sunday evening through the start of
class on Tuesday.) We'll
describe
that later as we approach the first testing period.
Block I: Foundations of Astronomy
We'll explore what we know and especially how we know it with confidence. We'll explore the nature of what we see and why it looks that way and build an understanding of what tools we have available to find out more. We will learn about the way the heavens move, what the ancients and early astronomers discovered for us and thought about the heavens and we'll study the nature of light itself and what we can learn from it. The most fundamental aspect of astronomy is the fact that stars and galaxies continuously radiate light. If we can collect that light and are clever enough to take it, study it, and learn from it, we can know the history of a star, its temperature and chemical composition, and its probable destiny.
What we are covering in BLOCK I:
Jul 8th Introduction to Class
- Nature of Astronomy
- The Universe - Its scale and distances
