Astronomy Courses

Fundamentals and practical application of photography, spectroscopy, photometry, astrometry, interferometry, and current developments in detector technology and telescope design.

An overview of modern astrophysical phenomena with an introduction to astronomical databases, plotting tools, data manipulation and visualization, and numerical analysis techniques.

Introduction to the field of planetary science; formation of the solar system, terrestrial, and Jovian planets; detailed discussion of Mars, Jupiter, Europa and Titan; discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs; overview of detection methods and analysis of recent discoveries of other solar systems.

Structure, kinematics, and dynamics of the Milky Way Galaxy and its various components.

Research on student learning, understanding concepts, teaching styles and models, types of tests and other evaluations, and presentation techniques; participation in the faculty enrichment seminars organized by the Center for Teaching and Learning. Hands-on experience in teaching introductory laboratories.

Physics of radiative transfer in stellar atmospheres and the formation of continuous and line spectra with particular emphasis on the spectroscopic analysis of stellar photospheres and chromospheres. Multilayer stellar atmosphere models; absorption line formation, deviations from local thermodynamical equilibrium, determination of chemical abundances in stars.

Applications of the time-dependent equations of stellar structure to models of stellar interiors: thermodynamics, hydrostatics, energy transport, nuclear energy generation; protostars, red giants, white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes.

Modern instrumental techniques for high angular resolution astronomy: Fourier imaging, adaptive optics, speckle imaging, optical and radio interferometry, This course uses it own free & open source textbook written by Prof. Jefferies and Prof. Baron, and has its own github repository.

Physical conditions within the various components of the interstellar medium and the observational approaches to understanding these components.

Observed distribution and properties of normal galaxies, active galaxies, and quasars; introduction to cosmology.

Solving astronomical problems using modern numerical methods, with a practical “hands-on” approach to code-writing. A wide range of subjects are covered including numerical analysis, error analysis, Bayesian modeling and fitting, time series analysis, optimization, image processing and parallel programming. This course uses its own free & open source textbook written by Prof. Baron, and has its own github repository.

An introduction to the physics of plasmas, with an emphasis on developing a physical understanding of the non-intuitive nature of plasmas, and acquiring the basic techniques required for carrying out research in plasma physics.

The course introduces the key areas of modern solar physics and space weather. The physical processes that take place in the solar interior, solar atmosphere, and heliosphere are considered separately and in conjunction. Particular attention is given to solar transient events and their interaction with the magnetosphere and terrestrial environment. The course also highlights the state-of-art observational capabilities in heliophysics.

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