ASTR 101

Monday, September 9, 2013

 Announcements: ID and Top Hat reminders.
 Today's Topics: The Sky last night, Venus;
• Review: Questions on eclipses.

Early History of Astronomy
• Planet motion: Regular vs retrograde; Mars.
• Parallax: The concept, and its importance.
• Aristotle: Ideas on motion, geocentric model.
• Ptolemy: An elaborate model with epicycles.
• Aristarchus: Distances and heliocentric model.
• Others: Eratosthenes, Hipparchus (star catalog, magnitudes, ...); Other cultures.
Renaissance Astronomy and
The Copernican Revolution
• Copernicus: His model and explanation.
• Tycho Brahe: Fame, model and Observatory.
• Galileo: Inertia, the Milky Way, the Sun, the Moon and Jupiter's moons, phases of Venus.
• Johannes Kepler: Law of ellipses, law of areas and law of periods.

 Assignment: Sections 3.2 and 3.3 of the book; Today's class summary; Lecture notes.

Spaceweather; APOD; Heavens-Above; Clear Sky Clock; PhysOrg Astronomy News; The Sky at a Glance

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