Ay 124 -- Winter Term 2015-16

Instructor: Chuck Steidel (252 Cahill, x-4168).

Office Hours: drop by any time, or make appt. by e-mail

The TA for the class is Denise Schmitz (357 Cahill, x-4519)

Denise's office hours are TBD.

The class meets Weds. and Fri., 1-2:30pm, in 219 Cahill

The current syllabus

Announcements Note: there will be no class on Weds., March 9- instead, we will meet on Friday, March 11, at the normal class time (1:00pm) to hear talks from each of you. We will end that day when we finish, circa 3pm.

Requirements

Grading will be based on a combination of homework sets (50%) and a research project (50%) consisting of a written 5-10 page paper and a 10-minute presentation to your classmates during the last week of classes. The paper will be due on Sunday, March 6 by midnight p.m., so please plan ahead to set aside time to work on it.

There will be 5 problem sets during the term. Assignments will generally be due Fridays at 5pm, turned into Steidel's mailbox in 249 Cahill, except by prior arrangement with the instructor and the TA.

On the homeworks, you may discuss the problems with your classmates, but each student is expected to write her/his solutions independently.

Homework Assignments

• Homework #1 , available 6 January 2016, due 15 January 2016
• Homework #2 , available 21 January 2016, due 29 January 2016
• Homework #3 , available 29 January 2016, due 5 February 2016
• Homework #4 , available 10 February 2016, due 24 February 2016
• Homework #5 , available 24 February 2016, due 4 March 2016 ps5 data

Notes and Supplemental Materials

• Notes from first week of classes on Stellar parameters
• Slides for lecture 2 (1/8) Lecture 2 Slides
• Slides for lecture 4 (1/15) Lecture 4 Slides
• Slides for lecture 5 (1/20) Lecture 5 Slides
• Notes on chemical evolution of gas+stars(1/22) Chemical evolution notes
• Slides for lecture 10 (2/5) Lecture 10 Slides
• Slides for lecture 12 (2/12) Lecture 12 Slides
• Slides for lecture 14 (2/19) Lecture 14 Slides
• Slides for lectures 16,17 (3/2) Lecture 16-17 Slides

Reading

There is no single text book that covers all of the topics for Ay124 at an appropriate level. Each week has associated with it some recommended reading in three textbooks: "Galactic Astronomy", by Binney and Merrifield (1998), "Galactic Dynamics", by Binney and Tremaine (2nd edition, 2008), and "Galaxy Formation and Evolution", by Mo, van den Bosch, and White (2011). Note that the Mo et al textbook will prove useful for Ay127 as well! All 3 books are on reserve in the Cahill library, but you may want to consider buying one or more of them as a reference (e.g., the Mo, van den Bosch, and White book is both fairly current and covers a lot of useful ground across many areas of astrophysics). For some topics, links to papers or review articles will be provided for background reading.

Here are some links to papers of relevance to topics covered in class; reading or at least perusing them is recommended: