HISTORY
New interactive history of cosmology website from the American Institute of Physics
Click below for some wonderful biographies; here
is the main index of the website.
        
Ptolemy  
Hipparchus 
Copernicus
 
Kepler 
Brahe* 
Galileo 
Newton 
Halley
*A more "colorful" Tycho Brahe page, including his nose, his pet moose and his death
SCALE AND MOTION
Here's an actual SCALE
MODEL
of the solar system being constructed along Route 1 in Maine. The
scale
is 1 mile=1 AU. (1 AU = the distance from the Earth to the Sun = 93
million miles = 150 million km.) At this scale, the nearest star would be beyond the
real orbit of the moon!
Explanation of distances in astronomy, and parallax
Schematic of what retrograde motion looks like. Double-click the image to start.
What it really looks like, shown here when Jupiter and Saturn happened to be located in the same part of the sky.
Retrograde Motion - Ptolemy's explanation
Retrograde Motion - Copernicus' explanation
Kepler's Laws: I, II, III visualization; III; III applet
An Interactive applet for Kepler's Laws, Retrograde Motion, Inner Planet Phases, and more...
PHYSICAL PRINCIPLES
Transverse
and Longitudinal Waves
The Rutherford Experiment:
PARTICLES
The sheet on particles and forces
blowup
of the chart of particles and interactions in the stairwell.
Explanation of the
Higgs Boson
STARS
Hydrostatic Equilibrium demonstration
First step in hydrogen fusion
Watch fusion simulation click on the top image. You might as well grab a cup of coffee - this takes a while to get to the end...
Stellar Evolution and the HR Diagram
Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy
A Gallery of Planetary Nebula Spectra
Sun/White Dwarf size comparison
Building neutron-rich isotopes
High-mass core -- Type II SN precursor
Why an iron core means good-bye
Type II Supernova explosion cartoon
White Dwarf/Neutron Star size comparison
WD in a binary -- Type Ia SN precursor
website source for many images shown here, plus good stellar evolution explanation
RELATIVITY
Concept of a World Line (video)
Relativistic Addition of Velocities
The Equivalence Principle
Gravitational Bending of Starlight
Diagram
of Precession of Mercury's Perihelion
Simulation of Orbit Precession
Real-World Relativity: the GPS System
BLACK HOLES
Warped Space around a Schwarzschild BH
A Case in Point: Cygnus X-1 Black hole size-environment relation
Black hole at the center of the Milky Way
Supermassive
Black Holes in Galaxies
Here is
the first observational evidence of a star being tidally disrupted by
a black hole!
Black
holes in general
DISCOVERING THE UNIVERSE
Large-Scale Galaxy Distribution
Shapley's globular cluster results from Jim Schombert's Galaxy page (an excellent resource)
The Distribution of Globular Clusters in the Milky Way
The Shapley-Curtis Debate and the Scale of the Universe main page
Cepheid variable stars on the HR Diagram
Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relation
Demonstration of Cepheid P-L Relation
Hubble Tuning Fork of Galaxy Types
Hunting for Cepheid Variables in M100
Expansion of the universe animation
GENERAL COSMOLOGY
Some of my notes that may be helpful:
Comparison of matter and radiation densities
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (temp & time)
A good summary page of modern cosmology
Blackboard: Scientific American articles on "Misconceptions about the Big Bang"; "Gravitational Lenses"; "Dark Energy"
Blackboard: New York Times Magazine article on Dark Energy
SN Ia evidence for acceleration
A universe with Λ>0 can be older
graph of ΩM-ΩΛ with observations
The all-important w
Future of the universe depends on the source of dark energy
Standard Model R(t)
applet with adjustable Ho and Ω values
Applet
that plots age, size & lookback time. Click on "APPLET" in the
upper left corner to start.
History
of the Universe (Shockwave required)
THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND
The Cosmic Microwave Background
CBR Dipole anisotropy
celestial map
Gravitational instability - seeds
top view
"Gravitational perturbations as ripples" movie
Origin and
Significance of Fluctuations (from Physics Today online)
Thermal history --> acoustic oscillations
Spatial inhomogeneity becomes angular anisotropy
Fluctuation size and geometry movie
How baryon density, ΩB, affects the power spectrum
How total matter density, Ω0h2, affects the power spectrum
WMAP fingerprint matching movie
BACK TO THE PAST: STRUCTURE
Light bending (from http://atropos.as.arizona.edu/aiz/teaching/xiaohui.html)
if
positive charge were evenly spread throughout an atom
if
the positive charge were concentrated in a tiny nucleus
Second step in hydrogen fusion
Last step in hydrogen fusion
The making of Cyg X-1
 
Evidence of matter falling in
  Why we think Cyg X-1 is a black hole
three-paragraph summary
"lesson plan"
metrics and geometry
the relationship of observed properties and redshift
the derivation of the Friedmann Equation
the cosmological constant
inter-relationships in the Standard Model
thermal equilibrium
age of the universe
timetable of the universe
Structure formation animation from initial fluctuations (from Martin White's page)
Gas density evolution animation with cosmological constant (from Martin White's page)
CDM simulation pie slice of SDSS survey
Pie slice from real SDSS survey
Dark Matter serves as scaffold for structure
Structure evolution movie from WMAP
Reionization simulation (from http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~ritzervj/Research/Reionization.html)
Large-scale ionization structure 100 Mpc co-moving cube with 4.2 billion particles
EVEN FARTHER BACK: INFLATION
Omega shouldn't be ~1
The false vacuum
The true vacuum
The resulting observable universe
Guth discusses inflation (part 1)
Guth discusses inflation (part 2)
A very readable explanation of inflation by Guth himself (from 10 years ago, and anticipating the results from COBE and WMAP, but still relevant)
THE FUTURE/SPECULATION
Levels of multiverses
Level I
Level II
Level II multiple universes
Level II parameters
Level III
Example of many worlds
Level IV
Cosmic
Collision: The End of the Milky Way from The Space Telescope
Science Institute
Supercomputer Simulation of the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy in a future collision
The New Hubble Ultra Deep Field - these are all galaxies!
...and its location in the history of the Universe
Jim Schombert's
cosmology course website -- EXCELLENT REFERENCE! Use it as a supplement to your textbook.
Stephen
Hawking's public lectures, downloadable as .pdf files, for use
with Adobe Acrobat Reader; can be printed out.
TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY: SN2006GY
The supernova
Three views
The light curve
Pair production
Explosion animation
A local analog?
IMAGES, STARS & SKY
Hubble Space Telescope Latest
Information
SKYLIGHTS: Weekly Astronomy News & Images
Stars:
Portraits of Stars and Their Constellations
Sky & Telescope Interactive Star Charts
Back to Astronomy 330 Homepage
Titles include:
Space and Time Warps
The Beginning of Time
Does God Play Dice?
Life in the Universe
You are visitor , courtesy of
at www.digits.com