last revised 11/2/09
Fall 2009
ASTRONOMY 211
Assignments & Announcements

Clarification of homework policy:
If you work with someone on a homework assignment, write down the name(s) of your co-worker(s) on your paper. The important thing to remember is that what you turn in for a grade must be in your own words.

COURSE STATUS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Pending assignments as of 11/2:

  • Long-term observing assignment, due 11/30
  • Final Project - draft proposals due Tuesday, 11/3 - to be returned by Thursday, 11/5, and final version submitted by Monday, 11/9.

ON RESERVE: "To Measure the Sky" by Fred Chromey is a useful adjunct to your textbooks; in particular, Chapter 3 discusses time and coordinates very nicely, and Chapter 9 is a thorough discussion of extinction, as well as photometry, starting on page 9-26. It may be helpful for your homework.

CLASS LINKS AND APPLETS

Web Resources
The Messier Catalog
ADS Abstract Service
NED Extragalactic Database
SIMBAD
Digitized Sky Survey
Los Alamos Preprints (astro-ph)
2MASS Image Gallery
MAST Archive Searcher
IRAF tutorial

Light
The Doppler Effect
Polarization demo
Atmospheric Opacity (from JPL)
Electromagnetic Spectrum (from Kirkwood Schools)
Dispersion
Reflection, Refraction, Diffraction
Superposition
Transverse and Longitudinal Waves
Superposition Principle
The Doppler Effect
Atmospheric Optics
Blackbodies
The Blackbody Game
Radiation Laws & Color Indices
Kirchhoff's Laws

Stars
Transverse Velocity Derivation
Proper Motion & More...
Parallax applet
Nearby Stars
Star Colors
Magnitudes
More on Colors and Magnitudes

Spectroscopy Links
Spectroscopy website
Classic prism spectrograph
Fraunhofer diffraction
The Grating Equation
Blaze Angle
Overlapping orders
Grating applet
Double-slit Interference(Young's Experiment)
Single-Slit Diffraction
Single-Slit Diffraction
Double-slit with diffraction

Radio Astronomy Links
Haystack tutorial
Mapping the radio universe
Interferometry
NRAO web page

Probability and Statistics Links
Several good applets
Central Limit Theorem
Central Limit Theorem applet Original Data from Hubble (1929)
Pascal's Triangle
More Pascal's Triangle
Binomial applet
Poisson applet

CCD Links
CCD Tutorial at U. Oregon
MOS capacitor
CCD architecture and readout
QE and Thinning
Clocking and charge transfer
Java Simulation of CCD fabrication
Description of noise sources in a CCD

Spherical Trig, Time and the Sky
A Compendium of Atmospheric Optics Effects
Williamstown coordinate grid
World Time Zones
Sidereal Time Applet
Solar vs. sidereal day
Star Trail video
Williamstown on a larger scale
Spherical triangle applet
Apparent nightly motion of a star
Precession demo

CCDs
Apogee's CCD University pages
Greg Bothun's (irreverent) CCD page

The Hubble Heritage Project. This technicolor gallery features some of the most glorious images taken with HST, meticulously processed to bring out details and colors.

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