Introduction to this course

• Course Title
  General Astronomy I (PHYS241000)
   
• Instructor
  CHANG, Hsiang-Kuang 
  Room 511, B-side, General Bldg II, x42952, hkchang@mx.nthu.edu.tw
   
• Contents
  Students are allowed to use AI freely if that can be helpful, but not in midterm and final exams.
   
  Brief contents:
  1. Introduction: celestial coordinate systems, positions of the sun, moon and planets in the sky
  2. Physical Astronomy: gravitation and planet motion, EM waves and spectra, astronomical observation
  3. Stellar Astronomy: stars, variable stars, stellar evolution
  

  This course, General Astronomy (I), is aimed at a beginner's level. Students from all colleges are welcome. Although a general college physics background is helpful, this course will be self-contained. It will provide students a general introduction to astronomy, as might be helpful in the modern world. To complete the introductory course, students are encouraged to take the course General Astronomy (II) (PHYS242000) afterwards. Students with further interest may then take other astronomy and astrophysics courses at junior and senior levels and those offered by the Institute of Astronomy.This course is aiming at providing students basic astronomy knowledge as a civilized human may need to know, and, maybe more importantly, at making students aware of uncertainties in our current understanding of the nature. Students with strong motivation are encouraged to take other more advanced astronomy and astrophysics courses in the future.
   

• Textbooks

  Author: Geller, Freedman & Kaufmann
  Title: 'Universe', 11th edition (2019) 
  Publisher: W. H. Freeman 
  ISBN-10: 1-319-03944-8
  ISBN-13: 978-1-319-03944-8 
  

  References:
   
  1. Other textbooks at an introductory level:
    1-1 Seeds & Backman: 'Foundations of Astronomy'
    1-2 Arny & Schneider: 'Explorations, An Introduction to Astronomy'
    1-3 Kaler: 'Astronomy!'
    1-4 Chaisson & McMillan: 'Astronomy Today'
    1-5 Zeilik: 'Astronomy: the Evolving Universe'
   
  2. Some old textbooks which are 'more astrophysical':
    2-1 Shu: 'The Physical Universe -- An Introduction to Astronomy'
    2-2 Carroll & Ostlie: 'An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics'
    2-3 Bowers & Deeming: 'Astrophysics'
   
  3. A fundamental, practical textbook for observations:
    3-1 Birney: 'Observational Astronomy'
   
  4. A more advanced book concerning observations and astrophysics:
    4-1 Smith: 'Observational Astrophysics'
   
• Schedule
  The course will go with classroom lectures. Discussion in classroom is very much encouraged. The mid-term and final exams are open-book ones.

  As listed above, this course starts with a journey from our Earth to the whole Universe as we know today. Then we come back to the Earth to introduce celestial coordinate systems and the face of the sky as we see from the Earth. This concludes Part 1 in this course, which is practical in our daily life and provides a first-time encounter with terminology and conventions in astronomy. (Chapter 1, 2, 3 in my on-line lecture notes) Part 2 includes brief reviews of planet motion and Newtonian gravity, properties of EM waves and atomic spectra, various observational tools and techniques. (Chapter 4, 5, 6 in my on-line lecture notes) Part 1 and Part 2 will take the first half of the semester and then comes the midterm exam.

  Part 3 is the core of this course and will take the second half of the whole lecture time. From stellar spectral classification, variable stars, giant stars, supernova explosion, to white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, our approach will be observation-oriented with discussion of interpretations. (Chapter 7 ~ 12 in my on-line lecture notes) The final exam will cover Part 3.

• Grading

  
  GD=F(PT)
  PT=ATx20% + MTx40%+ FNx40%
  GD: grade
  F: a monotonic mapping, which will be determined at the end of the semester.
  AT: attendance and performance in the classroom
  MT: mid-term exam
  FN: final exam