Astronomy 125: Stars in the Interstellar Medium

Announcements

posted 5/9

The final exam will be written, open book/notes, and self-scheduled. See details, below, in the assignments section.

Our seminar dinner will be at 6:00 pm on Sunday, May 10, at my house.

Archive of old announcements.

Assignments

posted 5/9

The final exam will cover almost entirely the ISM material, from the second half of the semester – though there may be a small part of a question or two that's directly about stars and of course much of the underlying physics (e.g. radiation transport) is relevant to both subjects.

The exam will be written, open book and open notes – anything handed out in seminar or as seminar reading, as well as your own notes (including any new notes you'd like to put together for use in the exam), and Ostlie & Carroll can be used in the exam. (Consulting other people or the internet is not allowed; nor is talking to other people about the exam until everyone's taken it.) It will be a three hour exam and I will give you four hours to take it.

You can pick it up from me and take it at your convenience – though I would like to know when you're taking it (and I can lend you my copy of Osterbrock when I give you the exam) and I would like you to take it in one sitting. You can take it any time between Monday morning, May 11 and Wednesday afternoon, May 20.

Archive of old assignments.

Class Information

An updated syllabus [pdf]

snack schedule

Our main textbook will be An Introduction to Modern Stellar Astrophysics by Carroll and Ostlie. Note that there is another, bigger, usually more expensive version (with the author's names reversed and without the word "Stellar" in the title) that contains additional chapters about extragalactic astronomy. You can use that text if you prefer, but there's no reason you should. Note, the version you want is the blue one in the middle.

We will supplement Carroll and Ostlie extensively with chapters from Spitzer's and also Osterbrock's classic ISM textbooks, plus some conference and research papers. These - and several other - books are on the reserve shelf in Cornell.

Carroll & Ostlie errata [pdf]

Links

Astronomy picture of the day