Projects

Everyone will be required to do a small independent project on a topic in astrophysics related to the course, but selected for their own interests and skills. The project should use at least one of these three resources:

• Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  (http://www.sdss.org)
• Digital Universe and Partiview
  (http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/hp/vo/du/partiview.html)
• Nature
  (http://www.nature.com/)

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

is the most ambitious astronomical survey project ever undertaken. The survey is mapping in detail one-quarter of the entire sky, determining the positions and absolute brightnesses of more than 100 million celestial objects. Much of the survey is available through a web-based resource. There will be assignments for everyone to use the Sloan Survey as a class exercise too.

Partiview

is a three-dimensional visualization program. Free software originally designed for Linux, it is also available in a Windows version. The Hayden Planetarium and the American Museum of Natural History use Partiview to plan public shows that explore the universe in depth, based on the best catalogs of position and distance we have for stars in our own galaxy (Hipparcos) and for other galaxies (Sloan Survey).

Nature

is a pre-eminent rapid publication journal. It often contains articles describing the very latest discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. We will routinely point out its table of contents in class and occasionally distribute articles. The journal is accessible through the University's electronic subscription with your university computer account and a web-browser from any computer on campus, and remotely through a portal on the University Library's webpage.

At the end of the semester each student will present the results of their project to the class in a short (25 minute) talk that uses OpenOffice presentation software, Powerpoint, or Adobe Acrobat (pdf) technology. The quality of the project work, the presentation, and the student discussion will be used to assign a grade to the project.