Recitation Sections:
| Number | Time | Room (in Physics) | Instructor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Wed,11:00AM | 56 | Qian Wang |
| 4 | Wed,12:10PM | 39 | Qian Wang |
| 5 | Wed, 1:10PM | 56 | Charles Keton |
| 6 | Wed, 2:10PM | 39 | Qian Wang |
| 7 | Wed, 3:10PM | 56 | Qian Wang |
Recitation sections provide an opportunity to work individually and in small groups on course material and assignments. You are required to attend all meetings of your recitation section. Some course material will be covered only in the sections, and you will be responsible for that material on the exams. If you do not attend your recitation section regularly, you will not pass this course.
Help Room: The instructors in this course will be available for individual help during Help Room hours. The location of the Help Room, and the specific hours when Astro 150 instructors will be there, will be announced in lecture and recitation, and will be posted on the A150 web site. Feel free to attend the hours of instructors other than your recitation TA. All instructors will also be available to help you at other times by appointment. Our offices, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses are listed above.
Textbook:
The Cosmic Perspective, Volume 2: Stars, Galaxies, and Cosmology,
Third Edition, by Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, and Voit .
Weekly background readings will be assigned in the Tuesday lectures, and
can also be found in the course outline.
However, we will use this text only to supplement lecture material: use the
book as a resource to help understand the material presented in class.
Feel free to dig deeper into this nicely illustrated text. This text
covers most (but not all) of the material we will cover in Astro 150; also,
several topics in the book are not going to be covered in Astro 150.
Because astronomy is changing so rapidly, the book is already out-of-date
in some areas. This book contains much more material than we will cover in
this class. Please note: Astro 120 will be using a very
similar-looking book by the same authors. Be careful to buy the correct
book at the bookstore!
Lecture Notes: Lecture notes will be posted on the course web site (see below). A warning: These notes are not a complete text, nor do they cover all the material that we expect the students to learn in this course. I urge you to use the notes as a study and note-taking guide, not as an excuse to not take your own notes or as an excuse to skip lecture!
Summaries of Essential Exam Material: Along with the WWW postings of lecture materials, we will also distribute brief summaries of each lecture which contain the MOST ESSENTIAL material you will need for the exams. They are NOT a substitute for the lectures themselves, or for your notes from lecture.
Web Pages: The WWW homepage for Astro 150 is at
Grading:
As a guide (AND THIS IS ONLY A GUIDE), in past semesters the breakdown has been approximately:
Term Project: You may, if you wish, elect to do a term project. The grade you receive on this project may be used to supplement one of your three test scores. Therefore, think of the project as a chance to improve an unsatisfactory test grade. We strongly encourage you to attempt a project, and have fun doing it! Project topics may concern any area of astronomy, not necessarily the topics covered in this course. You are free to choose a topic that relates to your own areas of specialty, as long as some connection can be made to the field of astronomy. To that end, we will require that you discuss your topic with us before beginning, and not later than the week following Exam #2. Past projects have included paintings (technically accurate), recreations of historical experiments, original songs (performed in class as well as on cassette), exposure of UFO hoaxes, etc.
Outdoor Observing Sessions: We are planning a few evening outdoor observing sessions to obtain a first hand view of the sky. These sessions will be announced in advance in lecture and on the course website. These sessions are open to all Astro 150 students and their friends and family; they don't call them "star parties" for nothing!