AS 1001 -- Stars and Elementary Astrophysics

Keith Horne -- University of St.Andrews


Astronomy Picture of the Day .
concam.net -- continuous sky images taken with fish-eye lenses and CCD cameras from different observatories around the globe.
KDH 2003 Lectures
sea01.pdf . introduction, atmospheric effects, scintillation, seeing.
sea02.pdf . pinhole camera, refractors, reflectors, aperture, focal length, F/ number, fast/slow, image size, magnification, resolution.
sea03.pdf . instruments, photographic plates, CCDs, photometers, spectrographs, prisms, gratings, x-ray telescopes.
sea04a.pdf . radio telescopes, resolution, interferometry, aperture synthesis.
sea04b.pdf . astronomical distances, parallax, parsec, inverse-square law.
sea05.pdf . magnitudes, apparent mag, absolute mag, distance modulus, light speed, frequency, wavelength, photon energy, blackbody spectrum, star colours, wien law, stefan-boltzman law.
sea06.pdf . review mags+blackbodies. L~R^2T^4. white dwarf vs red giant, life cycle of sun, how a star works, stellar evolution, planetary nebulae, colour indices, colour-mag diagram.
sea07.pdf . Spectral analysis, Fraunhofer lines, Kirchoff laws, atoms, ions, atomic energy levels, atomic transitions (bound-bound, bound-free, free-free), energy conservation, Lyman and Balmer series lines, limit, continuum, Rydberg formula.
sea08.pdf . Line widths, strengths, equivalent width, Doppler shift, redshift, broadening mechanisms (thermal, rotation, Zeeman, pressure, quantum), spectral types, luminosity classes, bolometric magnitudes, bolometric correction, calibrations, H-R diagram.
sea09.pdf . Star radii and masses, binary stars, visual, spectroscopic, eclipsing, detached, semi-detached, contact, lightcurves, velocity curves, masses, L~M^4, star lifetimes.
sea10.pdf . Star motions, celestial sphere, right ascension, declination, radial velocity, transverse velocity, proper motion, space motion, star orbits around black hole at galactic centre.
sea-telinst-six.pdf .
sea-stars-six.pdf .
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Keith Horne (kdh1-nospam-@st-and.ac.uk)