Block I: Foundations of Astronomy

Tentative Schedule:

Since we are meeting online rather than face to face our schedule is dramatically different than the normal Summer School Session. Instead of meeting ten times during the semester and requiring a lot of work for each session we will do our same work on-line. We plan to meet on-line on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, 7:00 PM until 9:30 PM. Labs and Exams will be done outside of the formal meeting periods. A word of caution, don't get behind. The summer is too short to play catch-up. You must discipline yourself to stay on track. Details will be sent to you in E-Mail once the registration is complete and before the first class period.  Here's the brief schedule for Block I:

July 8

Lab # 1 - Celestial Sphere

July 10

Lab # 2 - Telescope

July 15

Lab # 3 - Spectroscope

July 17  Exam # 1
 
 

July 8th

Nature of Astronomy

"When I had heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I was sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars."
 

Walt Whitman

 

Textbook:

         1.  Preview:    The Cosmic Landscape
            Test Yourself Questions, pg 13, 1 - 5

          2. Overview 1:    The Night Sky

          3.  Chapter One : History of Astronomy, Sections 1.1 and 1.2, pg 24 - 46
             Test Yourself Questions, pg 57, 1 - 3

Blackboard Streaming Video:

1. Intro to Astronomy on-line
2. Day 1 - Part 1
3. Day 1 - Part 2
4. Lab 1 - Celestial Sphere
5. Powers of Ten (Video) 

        Objectives: You should be able to

The Objectives listed in each lesson identify the topics that are of interest to us in each unit of study. We need to recognize that we are no longer tethered to the Earth. Since humanity first launched Sputnik on Oct 4, 1957 (were any of you around then?) (I recall that I was a sophomore in high school and the announcement came over the loud speaker that the Soviets had launched a a satellite into orbit successfully. This really shook us up. It radically changed high school curriculums and refocused the majors of college students. The nation went on an intensified technology binge. And the fact is, it worked! Students did learn math and science and kept that focus as long as the space program was active.) We certainly were not ignorant of the knowledge of the heavens, of the solar system and beyond, but one might inagine that within the last forty plus years we learned more than perhaps all of the scientists before us. In fact, maybe it would be more accurate to say that more than  90% (maybe even 95%) of our current knowledge of the solar system has been learned since we left the Earth and began to explore the heavens.

The distances get big in astronomy and so do the times. We consider the mean or average distance from the Earth to the Sun as one Astronomical Unit or 1 AU. This is about 92 million miles. Then we can describe the distances to other planets in AUs (eg. Jupiter is roughly 5.2 AU from the SUN) or to comets and asteroids moving around in the solar system. As we get outside the solar sytem (we'll look at just how big the solar system is and where its boundaries are considered to be a bit later) we need a much bigger unit, so we light years or the distance light could travel in a year. Light travels incredibly fast, at more than 186,000 miles in a second! Since a year has roughly 365 X 24 X 60 X 60 = 31536000 seconds, then light travels 31536000 X 186000 = 5865696000000 miles in one year. If you are like me, you'll never keep track of all those numbers and zeros. Scientists are no better than you at doing this. To make it easy they use what is called Power of Ten notation.

Power of Ten notation merely allows the user to keep track of the decimal places by either multiplying or dividing by powers of ten. Powers of tens are easy. 10¹ is just one ten. 10² is 10 X 10 or 100. There are two zeroes for 10². Similarly 10³ has three zeroes. In other words, the power is merely the number of zeroes! So a year has 3.15 X 10⁷ seconds in it and a Light Year (LY) has 5.87 X 10¹² miles in it. Since 10⁶ is a million, then 10¹² is a million million or a trillion! That's a lot! Whew! (Of course we have talked about a trillion dollars in our national budget like it is nothing.) Note, it is just too cumbersome to keep miles or even astronomical units. We have to use the power of ten system or we'd go batty trying to keep the numbers straight.

Time too is something to consider astronomically. We live of the order of 100 years. (Just trying to keep the order of magnitude proper. We all know the century mark is not super common nor is it average. But in powers of ten human life span is closer to 100 than to 10. Anyway, many of the changes that take place astronomically occur over a lot longer time than 100 years. It is tough to see changes in stars. The Sun, for example will be in its present phase of energy generation for another five billion years. It has been in this phase (called Main Sequence) for five billion years already so it will be there like 10 billion years or 10¹⁰ years! There are indeed some rapid changes, like supernovae and the like that take place in much shorter time intervals.

I won't always put as much details like this for each lesson. I think you'd get bored just reading text. What I'll try to do is make the Textbook your main guide. I will try to add more URL links to the objectives so you can jump around and by an active participant rather than scrolling through the materials. What do you think?
 

1. Recognize and appreciate that we are no longer tethered to this Earth.
2. Explain the scale of distances in the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe.
3. Explain the difference between AU and LY.
4. Explain the difference between a Constellation and an Asterism.
5. Explain what retrograde motion of the planets is.
6. Distinguish between Apparent and Absolute Magnitudes.
7. Define key points on the Celestial Sphere, including Zenith, Nadir, Celestial Equator, and Celestial Poles.
8. Explain how the Gravitational Force of the sun and moon acting on the Earth cause its orbit to precess.
9. Decsribe the relative positions of the Sun and Moon during both solar and lunar eclipse.
10. Explain what causes the seasons we experience on the Earth.
11. Discuss how disparate cultures around the Earth focused on the heavens.
12. Discuss how the Greeks showed us that the universe is accessible to human reason.
13. List contributions of Aristarchus and other Greeks
14. List accomplishments of the Greeks in describing the universe.
15. Describe Ptolemy's model of the solar system and especially his account of retrograde motion.
16. Describe what features of the geocentric model of the world that made it so appealing to scientists of the day
17. Explain why, in general, the sun, moon, and planets appear to move towards the east across the sky
18. Describe how the moon looks in its varied phases.
19. Explain the positioning of the sun and moon during a solar eclipse.
20. Explain the positioning of the sun and moon during a lunar eclipse.
21. Describe why seasons take place as they do.
    
    Relate long term climatic changes to the earth's precession.

Key Words: You may use these for Review or SEARCH items:
When you search the internet and find information on any of these words, if you find a particularly good site, let me know and I'll possibly link it for others. There might be some words you won't find. That becomes fruit for our online chat sessions.

• Lunar Eclipse
• Solar Eclipse
• Constellation
• Asterism
• Geocentric Universe
• Heliocentric Universe
• Retrograde Motion
• Epicycles
• Ptolemy
• Ellipse
• Semi-major Axis of Ellipse
• Eccentricity
• Almalgamest

Historical Foundations

"We had all the stars up there," said Huck, "And we use to lie on our backs and look up at them and discuss 'bout whether they was made or just happened. Jim he allowed that the stars were made, but I allowed they just happened. Jim said the Moon could'a laid them; Well, that looked kind of reasonable so I didn't say nothing against it. I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done."

Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn)

Lab #1 :Celestial Sphere
 

 You 'll need to complete assigned activities and reading . When we discuss motions in the heavens we recognize that what we see is based on our location or our perspective. But we also need to look for the cause and effect relationship that exists. Indeed, if the earth orbits the Sun, why does it do so? Does it move in its orbit like the other planets? Can we predict what that orbit will be?

Copernicus preferred a better model of the solar system because the geo-centric model was not as aesthetically pleasing as the helio-centric or Sun centered model. The fact is, it was not able to predict the movements of the planets or eclipses any better. Hindsight today can tell us that had he used elliptical orbits rather than circular ones the reults could have drastically improved. Thomas Kuhn in 1958 wrote his seminal work on the Nature of Scientific Revolutions. In it he pointed to Copernicus. Kuhn suggests that scientists tend to do experiments to reenforce the existing paradigm. Anomolies to the existing paradigm are often overlooked and explained away. retrograde motion of the planets was, according to Ptolemy's model, explained by the epicycles in their orbit. Ptolemy's model was so sophisticated and worked so well that it "had to be right." But it wasn't. Kuhn further pointed out that eventually the accumulation of anomolies leads to crisis and a new paradigm is developed usually by someone outside the discipline (since the practitioners tend to reenforce the existing model.) Copernicus brought this new heio-centric model up and it was finally confirmed by solid empirical data by Kepler.

Here is where we make rapid advances as a civilization, moving from a descriptive type of science towards what we might call astrophysics. As we explore cause and effect relationaships, especially thanks to Newton, we see that the orbits of planets, comets moons and the like obey simple straightforward laws of nature. Look at the Three Laws of Kepler. They described (although Kepler was not able to articulate the cause precisely) how  planets moved about the Sun in elliptical orbits. When they are closer they move faster and when they are further away they move slower. Considering the fact that this data, collected by Tycho (pronounced "Taco") Brahe (no relation to Taco John) and Kepler at their observatory, Uraniborg located at Hveen, were all acquired with the naked eye and sorted out mathematically. This has to be a tremendous feat. Very very careful observations of the planets in motion against the sky, plotting them and then filtering our, so to speak, the motions of the Earth to bring the results forward.
 

• In addition to Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton as people (see the URL links) we discussed their roles in society. Copernicus for example, wrote the Revolution of the Spheres as a book that the church did not support. It had serious theological implications. If the Earth were merely a typical planet then the other planets could also have life and how special were we in God's eyes? If the Sun were a typical star then every star in the heavens could have planets with people, etc, etc, etc.
• Kepler's Laws. You ought to know them. they are described completely in the text. They pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the geo-centric world. They were empirical, just describing what is rather than explaining how or why. Know the three laws. They are still relevant today and actually apply to galactic, stellar and planetary motion.Objects in orbit follow these rules.
• Galileo - the URL link is a MUST!!!! It connects to the Galileo project at Rice University with information about the man, the contrbutions and even his daughter. You should read dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter. (Dava Sobel was a guest here on campus last fall.) Maria's letters to Galilei are at the site. Galileo has been called the father of modern science. This is what the books say and if on the exam, this is the correct answer. Yet, it was Tycho Brahe who may have indeed led him to adding the requirement of doing the experiment to verify or disprove the hypothesis. Tycho tried so hard to prove Copernicus wrong, but his very careful records of observations, the best ever in naked eye observations, actually proved him right.Galileo did NOT invent the telescope. He was the first to train it on the heavens.
• Newton too was precoscious. But he described motion like no other before him. It seems every major leap in science achievement comes from someone standing on the shoulders of others. He  described motion. the three laws are clearly connected. No single one stands alone. They point out how an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an external force. An object in motion will continue in motion in a straight line unless an external force causes it to move differently. This is called the law of Inertia, the 1st Law. When Apollo 13 blew its oxygen tank it was enroute to the Moon. It could not stop its motion and turn around like a car. It didn't have enough fuel. It coasted to the Moon and used the gravity of the Moon to turn it back towards the Earth. As long as there was no external force to change its motion it continued to move towards the Moon and then back to the Earth. When we go to Mars we will coast almost all the way. The second law described what happens if we apply an external force. It causes the aceleration to change, proportional to the mass of the object. The student is advised to check the text, pages 85-89 for quatitative descriptions of motion and gravity.

Ideas of Classical Astronomy - Foundations of a Science

 

Textbook:

          1.  Chapter One : History of Astronomy, Sections 1.3 -1.5, pg 46 - 60
             Test Yourself Questions, pg 57, 4 - 5
          2.  Projects - Read over. Some of these may be ideas for your personal diary or what we call, Observing Journal
          3. Essay One - Backyard Astronomy  pg 61 - 69. Information here should be helpful with Celestial Spehere and other labs.
             Test Yourself Questions, pg 69, 1 - 5
          4. Chapter Two Gravity and Motion, sections 2.1 - 2.9 Read and understand what escape velocity is, the Lw of Gravity and the Laws of Motion.

 

Blackboard Streaming Video:

1. Day 2 - Lecture
2. Lab 2 - Telescope
3. Night Sky
4. Seasons (Video) (explains seasonal changes based on inclination of Earth's rotational axis)

 

Objectives: You should be able to:

1. Exlain the movement from the geocentric system to the heliocentric model of the solar system.
2. Discuss the CopernicanRevolution
3. List contributions made by Tycho Brahe towards understanding a new solar system
4. State Kepler's Three Laws of Planetary Motion.
   
   Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
5. Use Kepler's Third Law to relate orbital distance and period.
   1. Compare differing ways scientific models come about and become accepted.
   2. Describe the contributions of Galileo to science and tell why he is considered the "Father" of Modern Science.
   3. Discuss the role the church played in open and free discussion of science.
   4. Know and understand Newton's Laws of Motion
   5. Articulate Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation.
   6. Discuss Newton the man and scientist.
   Key Words: You may use these for Review or SEARCH items:
   • Elliptical Motion
   • Orbit
   • Semi-Major Axis
   • Uraniborg
   • Helio-centric
   • Geo-centric
   • Period
   • The Principia
   • Gravity
   • Force
   • Central Force
   • Orbit

 

Galileo was not the inventor of the telescope. But he was the first to use it. He showed the Greek model to be wrong. He had a low power telescope but saw things no man had dreamed of. When you build your telescope (possibly next week) you'll begin to see things you have not dreamed of too. You'll also be able to see the mountainous features of the Moon and later this summer other interesting objects. I'll clue you in.

Galileo recognized the brilliance of Kepler's observations and data analysis. He saw that everything did not orbit the Earth because he saw Moons orbiting Jupiter. The fragile balance of the solar system was indeed helio-centric, not centered about the Moon. This had dramatic implications to the church. If Copernicus was right and we are merely a typical planet then there could be life on other planets and could the basis of theology that assumed Christ came down and died for us be threatened?

Newton in articulating his laws of motion and the law of gravity tied up solar system mechanics for good. His laws, while they do not explain the very fine anomolies explained by relativity, do account for most of what we see. This brought us into the world of astrophysics and made us use physical laws to explain physical phenomena in the heavens.

Do your  readings in the Annuals. Be prepared to discuss these online.

Lab #2 :Telescope Lab
 

July 15th

  Nature of Light and the Story It Tells
TELESCOPES AND GATHERING LIGHT

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry."

Richard Feynman

 

Textbook:

          1.  Chapter Three : HLight and Atoms, Sections 3.1 - 3.7
             Test Yourself Questions, pg 117, 1 - 5
          2.  Chapter Four: Telescopes - pg 120 - 142. Doing the Telescope Lab will help you understand this material.  Test Yourself Questions, pg 143, 1 - 5
 
 Blackboard Streaming Video:

1. Day 3 - Lecture
2. NASA - More Than Your Eyes Can See
3. Summer Sky
4. Lab 3 - Spectroscope

Objectives: You should be able to:

1. Contrast the particle and wave models of light
2. List the various kinds of light in the Electromagnetic Spectrum
3. List the wavelengths for each region of the em spectrum: Optical, IR, UV, Radio, Gamma Ray and X-Ray
4. Explain basic structure of atomic matter.
5. Describe Black Body Radiation as dependent only upon temperature.
6. Contrast the three kinds of spectra: Continuous, Emission and Absorption.
7. Recognize lines in the Hydrogen spectra.
8. Describe Spectral Classification of stars using OBAFGKM
9. Compare Reflector and Refractor Telescopes.
10. Identify features of Refractor, Cassegrain and Newtonian telescopes.
11. Know the difference between Magnification, Light Gathering and ResolutionLight Gathering and resolution
12. State advantages and disadvantages of various kinds of telescopes and binoculars.
13. Discuss why UV, X-Ray and Gamma Ray astronomy is done in space.
14. How a Radio Telescope is similar to and unlike optical telescopes.
15. List some of the major Radio Telescope facilities in the world.
16. Describe the limitations of radio telescopes.
17. State why radio interferometry has been developed.
18. Describe the effects of the earth's atmosphere on IR, UV, and X-rays
19. List advantages and disadvantages of the HST.
20. Access and acquire images from the HST archives.
21. The Space Infrared Telescope is our latest Great Space Observatory.

Key Words: You may use these for Review or SEARCH items:

• Isotope
• Black Body Radiation
• Quantum mechanics
• Electron energy levels
• Continuous Spectrum
• Emission Spectrum
• Absorption Spectrum
• Lyman Series
• Balmer Series
• Magnification
• Chromatic Aberration
• Parallax
• Arecibo
• NRAO
• IRAS
• IUE (International Ultraviolet Explorer)
• HST (Hubble Space Telescope)
• Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

 
 

 
Lab #3 :Spectroscope

Opportunity to EXCEL # 1 

Exam 1 - The Sky, telescopes, What Astronomy is based on ...

This exam will probably be 40 or 50 questions, Multiple Choice. It will be available online all day.  Allow one hour but you'll probably be done quicker than that. It is intended to be closed book, closed notes. You have to be on your honor at this point. A suggestion for Multiple Choice Exams is that as you review your responses, unless you are absolutely sure the answer is wrong, do not change it. Much of the time your first hunch is correct. Of course, if you know the answer is wrong, you would be foolish not to change it. All the tests combined make up 1/3rd of your grade. So the three tests are worth about 11% each. Also, understand that since the test will come from a pool of questions, each person will in essence get a different exam. This helps to protect the integrity of the system.

The exam will be set up on Blackboard. It can be found at:  http://eclipse.stkate.eduOnce the final class list is made up I will make sure you are enrolled in Blackboard. It works fairly easily and in a straightforward manner. You'll get immediate feedback.

Everyone in the class has been entered into Blackboard. Merely login using your Lotus Notes name. Your password is your six digit student ID number.  If you have trouble, ask Cyndy (ext 8642) at the Computer Center.  The exam will be available Sunday evening after dinner and run until just before class starts on Tuesday. It is not adviseable to wait until the last minute to take it. I suspect it will take only a half hour or so to take the exam. Good luck. Faraway Worlds

You need to complete this exam BEFORE the start of class on July 17th!