[Chaos-l] Free online intro astronomy class offered by Duke

[Tony Rice]

Consists of 6 videos per week averaging about 25 minutes each plus
weekly homework (online quiz).  Runs Nov 27 (still time to sign up and
get week 1 videos viewed) and ends Jan 28.  Also includes access to a
discount on Starry Night College software.

 http://ow.ly/fIxxg

Syllabus:
Week 1: Positional Astronomy (naked-eye Astronomy)
We will spend our first week familiarizing ourselves with descriptions
of the positions and motions of celestial objects.

Lecture 1: Positional Astronomy Introduction
Lecture 2: The Celestial Sphere
Lecture 3: The Local View
Lecture 4: Where is the Sun?
Lecture 5: Tilt and the Seasons
Lecture 6: The Moon Moves Too
Week 2: Newton’s Universe
Newtonian physics revolutionized the way we understand our Universe.
We will discuss Newton’s laws of mechanics, the conservation laws that
follow from them, his theory of gravity and some applications to
Astronomy, as well as some properties of radiation. The last clip will
be a quick look at the features of quantum mechanics relevant to our
course. This will be a particularly busy and challenging week, but
hard work here will pay off later.

Week 3: Planets
We will not have time in this course to do any justice to the broad
and exciting field of planetary science. We will spend the week on a
general review of the properties and structure of our Solar System and
our understanding of its origins and history. We will end with some
discussion of the exciting discoveries over the past decade of many
hundreds of extrasolar planets.

Week 4: Stars
What we know about stars and a bit about how we found out. We will
begin with a quick review of the best-studied star of all, our Sun. We
will then talk about classifications; H-R diagrams and main sequence
stars; distance, mass, and size measurements; binaries; clusters; and
stellar evolution through the main sequence.

Week 5: Post-Main-Sequence Stars
Final stages of stellar evolution and stellar remnants. Giants, white
dwarves, novae, variable stars, supernovae, neutron stars and pulsars.

Week 6: Relativity and Black Holes
We will spend most of this week acquiring an understanding of the
special theory of relativity. We will then discuss the general theory
in a qualitative way, and discuss its application to black holes,
gravitational lensing, and other phenomena of interest.

Week 7: Galaxies
Galactic structure and classification. Active galactic nuclei, quasars
and blazars. Galactic rotation curves and dark matter. Galaxy clusters
and large-scale structure.

Week 8: Cosmology
What we can say about the universe as a whole. Hubble Expansion. Big
bang cosmology. The cosmic microwave background. Recent determination
of cosmological parameters. Early universe physics.