ASTRONOMY 553/4, Section 1, Sched. No. 305NE

EXTRAGALACTIC ASTRONOMY

Fall 2008

TIME AND LOCATION: Tuesday, Thursday, 2:00-3:15pm, Astronomy 265

INSTRUCTOR: Mark Whittle

OFFICE HOURS: Room 216, Astronomy Building, Tu, Th, 11:00-12:00 (or by appointment); Telephone 924-4900 ; email: dmw8f@virginia.edu
Class email: CLAS_2008_Fall_ASTR553-1@toolkit.virginia.edu

WEB PAGE: http://sol.astro.virginia.edu/class/whittle/astr553/
(The UVa Toolkit web page points to this; but use it for, eg, anonymous feedback if you wish)

TEXTBOOKS:

Unfortunately, there is no text which covers all the topics. However, the following two texts cover a great deal and we will use them as primary texts:

Galactic Astronomy by Binney and Merrifield
Galactic Dynamics by Binney and Tremaine (2nd edition)

I have put a number of other books on reserve which you may also find useful.

Galaxies in the Universe by Sparke and Gallagher
Galaxies and Galactic Structure by Elmergreen
Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology by Peter Schneider (Springer)

Note, you can find Errata for B&M and S&G

Online bookstores include: Amazon; Books a Million; Barnes and Noble; or Bigwords. A web site in Minnesota will also do an automatic web search for prices : CampusBooks4Less.

COURSE CONTENT : The pair of classes, 553 & 554, aim to survey extragalactic astronomy at a level suitable for graduate and senior undergraduate astronomy students.

Topics emphasised in 553 include : morphological, photometric and dynamical properties of normal galaxies; galaxy gas content, metallicities and populations.

Topics emphasised in 554 include : Star formation; galaxy interactions, groups and clusters; galaxy nuclei and AGN; Cosmology and galaxy formation.

A more specific list of the 20 topics we shall cover is given in the Course Outline Page.

PREREQUISITES : Some astronomy, physics and math background will be assumed, comparable to ASTR 124/212, MATH 131/132/221/325 and PHYS 151/152/251/252. However, since one aim of this course is to touch on many topics, we will not have time to develop any topic in great mathematical or physical depth. Consequently, I am hoping that the course will be relatively accessible (for example, keen 3rd or 4th year undergraduates should be able to do fine).

Some homework problems requre modest familiarity with a programming language (e.g. Fortran, C, IDL). Mathematica, while useful for a number of things, isn't really suited to some of the problems.

REQUIREMENTS : There are three basic requirements for completing this course.

There will be a number of homework assignments throughout the semester, with appropriately specified deadlines. The homeworks together will comprise 70% of the final grade.
There will be a final exam on Monday December 8th (at 9:00 - 12:00) which comprises 30% of the final grade.
Before each class meets, I will expect you to have completed a small reading assignment so you have a framework for the material presented in class.

HONOR CODE: As with all courses at UVa, all your graded work is subject to the Honor Code. Of course, I expect you will be discussing the homework material together, but when it comes to writing up your answers, this is expected to be exclusively your own work.