This homework is about becoming familiar with astronomy on the internet and to entice students to find information on the internet.  (Unless asked to, do not copy and paste somebody else's information.  That's plagiarism.  Instead you need to express information in your own words.)

HW #0 Becoming familiar with the Internet

Submit completed HW in “Private Mail” to Instructor.

Answering questions about web pages:  Access a web page that contains the information needed, copy the needed info into your Word processor document.  Copy the URL as well.  Example:

2. How can the mass of stars be determined? "By applying Kepler’s and Newton's laws to the analysis of binary star orbits it is possible to determine the mass and basic dimensions of stars. This is our most direct and accurate way of determining stellar masses. Recall Kepler’s 3rd law in Newtonian form:"  (http://www.kingsu.ab.ca/~brian/astro/a200l16a.htm doesn't work)

In message 1394 on Monday, August 23, 2004 19:03, Gwen writes:
>I have tried to access the the King's University, new TKUC online it will not connect.
(Gwen looked at HW#0, qu.2.)
I'm trying to keep up with links that may get outdated.  I probably will fix the one that Gwen described.
In the meantime, since HW#0 is about maneuvering around the internet, here's a way for you to find the information: I typed kings university
on google.com, came up with the correct college (in Alberta, Canada), then went to the Astronomy department and got through to the necessary
information.  [Notice that the answer isn't just anything from that page, but that it has to relate to the mass of stars.]
A. Veh

Short Presentation:
Also, post something interesting (a paragraph or two, i.e. very short if you can, not much research required) on the bulletin board.  It's about something in astronomy that caught your interest.  Among the 100+ short presentations I had heard in my classes, there were plenty about black holes, neutron stars, meteors, Mercury, etc.  To give you an idea, two that stuck with me: one person explained why East and West seem to be switched on the starfinder;  another told us how cowboys were able to tell time by the movement of the Big Dipper - when it had rotated about 45 degrees (3 hours), another guy was awakened for his night shift.  Recently somebody told us a native American story about the stars.

Read your textbook's chapters on the history of astronomy, gravity and motion.

Type your HW answers into the Word processor.  Warning: for normal questions, you must answer in your own words.  You’re not allowed to copy paragraphs from a book or web page!  Only when specifically asked for information from a web site are you allowed to copy and paste that information.

HW #1 Gravitation and Motions in the Solar system

Hints: qu.2.  triangulation is very similar to parallax (explanation in Arny, ch. 1.2, Overview 5, 12.1); 3. a) & b) you or somebody else will know that, c) look up in textbook  

Accessing web sites (click on these links):

http://www.mapblast.com/   WNCC’s coordinates in Scottsbluff are 41.8743 and -103.6445 (of course these don’t work for you if you're not living very close to WNCC).  If it tells you something about an approximate address, it should still work if it’s only a few miles from your address.

http://www.heavens-above.com/ , type in your latitude and longitude, finally print out a 7-day prediction table for Iridium flares and try to observe some.  These Iridium satellites are on time, on the minute!  They’re impressive because they’re are so bright and because they exemplify Kepler’s laws so nicely.  Only with Kepler’s laws is a 6 day prediction on the minute possible (that’s a 99.988% accuracy).

HW #3

Hints: qu.1. think about it; 2. use the index and eliminate; 5 Arny, ch. 6.6, 9.2; 7 read my lecture script “Peculiar Planets”; 8 three different planets, see “Peculiar Planets” and Arny ch.8&9; 9.  Look at my 'Lecture Script', ‘VIT’s, etc.', most of them are explained there (examples: (a) night-day -> earth’s rotation; (g) ocean tides -> moon’s and sun’s gravitation); 10 read about surface and atmosphere of Earth and Mercury (perhaps our Moon’s as well since it’s simliar) and think about it.

HW #4, #5

Hints: HW 4, qu.1-10,12 read through the chapters in your textbook; 11, think about it.

HW #7

Hints: it is much easier than it looks like.  You need the Greek alphabet.  The text IS in English.  You need to substitute Roman letters (that’s our alphabet) for the Greek letters.  E.g. the very first word is easy, it starts out “Note ...”.  The purpose of this HW is that you become familiar with the Greek alphabet because we’ll come across many Greek letters during the second part of the semester.  The text itself is a review for the midterm.

HW #8

Read your textbook's chapter on Light and Atoms and my online lecture Light and Matter.

HW #9

Read your textbook's chapter on our Sun and my online lecture Our Sun.

HW #10

Read your textbook's chapter on Measuring Stars and my online lecture Measuring Stars .

HW #11

Read the articles supplied in the homework section.

HW #12

You see that I filled in some blanks on HW#12 for some guidance.  You also see that my “fillings” are not very elaborate.   This means, yours don't have to be either.  The main objectives are for you to see how real research is done and also how to analyze a scientific article.

Read your textbook's chapters on Stellar Evolution and Stellar Remnants and my online lecture Stellar Evolution.

HW #13,14

A note on my Stellar Evolution lecture: read through it and "fill-in-the-blanks" for your own sake.

HW 13, Read chapters 12-14, and my lectures on "Measuring stars" and "Stellar Evolution" help, too.

Hints:  qu. 1) in SEA-5 compare “form, MS, and dying” times from O and B stars to the same times for K and M stars; 2) more or less massive?; 3) the same as qu.1 from HW 14; 5) “Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium” or which element is the answer?; 6) which of these: red giant, white dwarf, neutron star, black hole?; 7) a time in minutes, days, or months.

HW 14, Read chapters 12-14, and my lectures on "Measuring stars" and "Stellar Evolution" and mini- lectures help, too.

Hints: qu. 1) the same as qu.3 from HW 13; 2) Arny, ch.13.1; 3) RG, wd, MS, or what?; 4) Arny, ch.14.1; 6) O,B,A,F,G,K, or M?; 7) Arny, ch.13.1; 11&12) RG, wd, ns, or bh?; 13) I want a "time", i.e. seconds, days, years, or whatever; 14) my SE script; 15) Arny, ch.14.3

If you don't understand something, post your inquiry on the bulletin board.
 

Read chapters 12-14, and my online lectures on "Measuring stars" and "Stellar Evolution" and mini-lectures help, too.

HW #15

Ask questions (private mail or bulletin board) about the HW questions.

Study for the quizzes 01 Astronomers 1 and 02 Astronomers 2, both Matching, 2 min each.  Study the astronomers (Eratosthenes, Ptolemy, Brahe, Galilei, Kepler, Newton) in Arny, ch.1, or look into my web page at "Lecture script", then "History of Astronomy" (disregard the Greek text for now).

03 Telescope and 04 Seasons.  study:  #3. types of Telescope, light-gathering, magnification, resolution; this quiz is multiple-choice, it's 2 min. long, and you can take it twice (but don’t have to), with the average being the grade.  #4. seasons; this quiz is essay, 10 min., only once allowed, the questions may be hard to understand, but you may say "I don't quite understand the question, but let me answer this way ... (as I understand the question) ..."

05 Kepler. Essay & Matching.  Study:  Kepler’s 3 laws and Newton’s law of gravitation, read the top of p.86 (Arny) as well.  Check what I have to say about these (lecture notes, Gravitation, motions, etc.).  It helps if you to have watched the video (see information below) at one of the campuses/centers.

You need to "Save Answer" to each question.  You still can go back and change your answers several times ("Save Answer" again).  Finally click "Finish".
Once you have clicked “finish”, that’s it.  From now on, you have only one chance to take a quiz.  If you just log out without “finish”, time will keep running, and I’d notice that.  The point is that you study for these quizzes and be prepared beforehand.  Of course I can’t check if you have your book is lying next to you, so you might as well have it open.  However, this quiz is 10 min, so if it takes you something like 30 min, I’m assuming that you weren’t prepared and read up on it while taking the quiz.  If you are worried about needing a lot of time to type your thoughts: keep it short (this is for those who write pages when a short answer is required ;-).

09I Constellations (fall) and 09V Constellations (spring); 5 min; matching; label diagrams depicting constellations

13 Magnitudes etc., 10 min.  This is about being able to read Tables 8 (there’s a typo: apparent magnitude of Betelgeuse is .41) and 9 in the Appendix in Arny, also study magnitudes, Doppler effect and Parallax (note that the “smaller” the parallax, the “farther” the star; see link).
14 HR-diagram, 10 min.  Become familiar with the HR-diagram and look at SEA-3 (my lecture Stellar Evolution, Appendix, 3rd table), my SE lecture script in general.
http://astro.estec.esa.nl/SA-general/Projects/Hipparcos/table361.html
better: http://www.wncc.net/astronomy/lecture/lecmeas.htm#parallax

19 Evolution III, Matching, 3 min. Study explosions and remnants, and how to identify them: Planetary Nebula, white dwarf, Nova, SN I and SN II, neutron star / pulsar, black hole, supernova remnant.
20 Pretty, Matching, 5 min. Study the pretty pictures in Arny chapters 13-16 (including chapter opening photos), on my Stellar Evolution and Hubble lecture scripts.  During the quiz I'll give you panel of 8 pictures (photos only - i.e. no diagrams; containing a galaxy, SN remnant, Planetary Nebula, globular and open cluster, SN in a galaxy, stellar nursery, black hole in galaxy) and you have to identify the photos.   See mini-lecture 5 - Messier objects.

Due at the end of the semester:  Start B0 Planets: All planets are on an arc that spans from approximately the East through the South towards the West, similar to our Sun's arc in the daytime sky.  Check the back of your starfinder: it tells you in which Zodiac constellation(s) a planet presently is. Right now you see a red light low in the Southwest right after Sunset, another bright one a little higher, a third (fainter one) higher in the South.  Later during the semester the red planet will appear during the evening.  In the morning you see a bright object in the East before sunrise.

Fall semester: A few days after the new moon, start Lab B1 Phases of Earth’s Moon.  This will take an entire month.  
Spring semester: A few days after the new moon, start Lab B1 Phases of Earth’s Moon.  This will take an entire month.  
Print the lab.  Use the boxes for your drawings and data.  Write in cloudy if it was cloudy on a particular day.
Snail-mail this lab to me (see address in glossary and on bulletin board).  If you give it to the WNCC Centers, you don’t need postage as they forward it to me free of charge.
If the weather in your region of habitation is just too bad, let me know and we postpone this lab for another month, then try again. 

If you had to postpone this lab because of inclement weather, START after the next new moon and hand in a month from then.

Due at the end of the semester:  B2 Seasons : must start now.

A0 Our Moon; near the full moon; if you don’t have binoculars, make a drawing from what you see without any magnification with the naked eye.

A1I, A1V Finding your way; you will wonder what you would have to write about here.  Actually it’s a lab that I just trust you to do - i.e. nothing to hand in - I’ll just give you the credit.

A2I, A2V    Bright stars; self-explanatory I think

A4 Variable Stars: observe Algol all evening on only one of the possible nights.  I posted U.T. (MST = UT minus 7 hours!) on the lab, BUT on the calendar it’s MST! (convenient for you)  At these dates, minimum brightness will occur during Nebraska’s night.  The bright moon however may interfere with observations.  Start observing Algol and the two comparison stars about 4 hours before the time of minimum brightness.  You would then check back every half or full hour.  (Lab is due to hand in when you’re done with it.)

A5 Pleiades; should be self-explanatory.
Note that there is hardly anything to write up for A5.

F0 Parallax; read through the story, but skip the procedures (too complicated, I think), instead your objective is to recognize that some stars shift and to tell me which star “moves” the most (and must therefore be closest!), x, y, or z, and which is farthest.  Read through the textbook on parallax and triangulaton.

F2  Age of a Star cluster; do procedures 1&2 (with your star from K2); 2. should read "align the y-axes (put them on top of each other), now move *only up or down* (not sideways!) until the two main sequences match up, then determine the difference  in magnitudes"; do #3 if you can - otherwise leave that to me; do #4 with my SEA-5

Do F3I, F3V Starfinder (without drawings).

F4I, F4V    Coordinates

G1 Jupiter’s moons; send me a couple of dates for each Io and Europa, for which you have identified these moons.

K1 Planetary motion; print out Sagittarius (teapot); make sure that you can recognize the “Teapot” and the “Teaspoon” on the print-out (I got some crummy print-outs in the past); then find Jupiter on the photos (DO  NOT  PRINT!!!) in relation to **teapot and teaspoon** (note that the photo edges are not(!) the same); draw its positions onto the Sagittarius print-out; note that Jupiter is always relatively close to the ecliptic; snail-mail to me (free from Sidney or Alliance center).

K2 Stellar Spectra (!!work together!!) CLEA Photometry and Spectroscopy; this may be the hardest lab all semester (and you might get hooked once you figured it out).

You work with the Pleiades star cluster (remember Lab A5 Pleiades) - need to change the FIELD in Spectroscopy.

In Spectroscopy, take a star's SPECTRUM, determine its SPECTRAL TYPE, record its COORDINATES (need for Photometry).

In Photometry, use your star's coordinates to find it, determine its V-count (Filter V): MEAN/SEC, then its B-count (change Filter to B): MEAN/SEC.

Example: I measured Alcyone (the brightest star in the Pleiades) -- 3h 44m 27s, 23d 57' 49", V-count = 5,636,000  , B-count = 6,123,000   , spectral type is B8.

Of course, you'd choose another star.

Share your results on the bulletin board.

As a follow-up, I'll explain during the following week what these data mean and how we evaluate them.

Subject: K2 Lab

Claudette Funk and Lori Foster:

>We did the fainter star first, because we were having so much
>fun with the bulletin board assignment. Coordinates are:
>3h 39m 57s 24d 19' 55" v=12,948 B=8,314 Spectral type is F5

>Celaeno Coordinates 3h 41m 51s and 24d 08' 00"  v=518,699
>B=538,199 Spectral type=B6

$ Using the same analysis, your fainter star has B-V=.48 (F7 compared to your F5, T=6300-6500 K) and apparent magnitude mV=9.6

Instructor:

Celaeno - your data and my results (using the equations from
Lab G2) for those (if you want you can try it yourself)

Do the following on your own if you like.  Otherwise here is my analysis and results with your data.

$ use (V=518,699 and B=538,199) and the color index B-V
relation to determine (mB - mV) = - 0.04 mag

$ with your B-V and (see Lecture notes, Stellar Evolution,
Appendix - last and first tables) determine Spectral Type
and Surface Temperature

$ B-V = - 0.04 gives about B9 (from SEA-6), compare to your
B6 (it’s not a perfect match, but not too bad either), and
B6 or B9 gives T = 11,000 to 14,000 K (from SEA-1)

$ use Celaeno's and Alcyone's V-counts and the
Magnitude-Brightness relation to determine the magnitude
difference (m1 - m2)

$ with Celaeno's V1 = 518,699 and Alcyone's V2 = 5,636,000
you get (m1 - m2) = 2.6 mag --- add this to Alcyone's mV=
3.0 mag and you get an apparent magnitude of mV = 5.6 mag
for Celaeno (note: this is "apparent" magnitude)

End of "do not do this on your own."

$ Using the same analysis, your fainter star has B-V=.48 (F7 compared to your F5, T=6300-6500 K) and apparent magnitude mV=9.6

Now you’re ready to start on Lab F2: first print the Pleiades HR-diagram and plot Celaeno and your fainter star into it.  More instructions later.

K4 Barnard’s star; instead of the description in lab K4, just look at the six diagrams from 2000 to 2100 and tell me which is Barnard’s star, the one that’s moving.