Welcome to the Spring 2020 semester graduate level introduction to astrophysics at Carnegie Mellon University. This repository will serve as the course website.
Please see the syllabus for further course details.
| Lecture | Date | Unit | Topics |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1/14/2020 | Introduction | Celestial Coordinates, Time |
| 2 | 1/16/2020 | Introduction | Luminosity, Flux, SEDs |
| 3 | 1/21/2020 | Telescopes | Optics, Telescope Design |
| 4 | 1/23/2020 | Exoplanets | Kepler's Laws, Detection Methods |
| - | 1/28/2020 | Telescopes | Student Presentations |
| 5 | 1/30/2020 | Stars | The Sun, H-R Diagram, Stellar Spectral Types, Radiative Transfer |
| 6 | 2/4/2020 | Stars | Radiative Transfer, Thermal Equilibrium, Stellar Atmospheres |
| 7 | 2/6/2020 | Stars | Scattering Processes, Line Formation |
| 8 | 2/11/2020 | Stars | Stellar Interriors, Hydrostatic Equilibrium, Virial Theorem |
| 9 | 2/13/2020 | Stars | Stellar Interriors, Equations of Stellar Structure, Scaling Relations |
| 10 | 2/18/2020 | Stars | Energy Generation in Stars, Nuclear Reaction Rates |
| 11 | 2/20/2020 | Stars | Stellar Nucleosynthesis, Main Sequence Stellar Evolution |
| - | 2/25/2020 | - | No Class |
| 12 | 2/27/2020 | Stars | Post-Main Sequence Stellar Evolution |
| 13 | 3/3/2020 | Stars | Degenerate Matter in Stars |
| 14 | 3/5/2020 | Stars | Massive Stellar Evolution, Supernovae, Neutron Stars |
| - | 3/17/2020 | - | Lecture Cancelled |
| 15 | 3/19/2020 | Galaxies | The Milky Way, The ISM |
| 16 | 3/24/2020 | Galaxies | The Distance Ladder, Hubble's Law, The Galaxy Population |
| 17 | 3/26/2020 | Galaxies | Galaxy Dynamics, Galaxy Clusters, Dark Matter, Population Statistics |
| 18 | 3/31/2020 | Cosmology | Riemannian Geometry, FRW Metric, Distances |
| - | 4/2/2020 | - | No Class |
| 19 | 4/7/2020 | Cosmology | General Relativity, The Friedmann Equations |
| 20 | 4/9/2020 | Cosmology | FRW cosmologies, The Age of the Universe |
| 21 | 4/14/2020 | Cosmology | The CMB, BBN, The Early Universe |
| - | 4/16/2020 | Cosmology | Cosmology Summary and Discussion |
| - | 4/21/2020 | - | Open Office Hours |
| - | 4/23/2020 | - | Open Office Hours |
| 24 | 4/28/2020 | Galaxy Evolution | Simulations of Galaxy Formation |