Key Information
About the content
An introduction to astronomy through a broad survey of what we know about the universe and how we know it.
Syllabus
We will spend our first week familiarizing ourselves with descriptions of the positions and motions of celestial objects.
Weeks 2-3: Newton’s Universe
Newtonian physics revolutionized the way we understand our Universe. We will discuss Newton’s laws of mechanics, the conservation laws that follow from them, his theory of gravity and some applications to Astronomy, as well as some properties of radiation. The last clip will be a quick look at the features of quantum mechanics relevant to our course. This will be a particularly busy and challenging unit, but hard work here will pay off later.
Week 4: Planets
We will not have time in this course to do justice to the broad and exciting field of planetary science. We will spend the week on a general review of the properties and structure of our Solar System and our understanding of its origins and history. We will end with some discussion of the exciting discoveries over the past decade of many hundreds of extrasolar planets.
Week 5: Stars
What we know about stars and a bit about how we found out. We will begin with a quick review of the best-studied star of all, our Sun. We will then talk about classifications; H-R diagrams and main sequence stars; distance, mass, and size measurements; binaries; clusters; and stellar evolution through the main sequence
Week 6: Post-Main-Sequence Stars
Final stages of stellar evolution and stellar remnants. Giants, white dwarfs, novae, variable stars, supernovae, neutron stars and pulsars.
Week 7: Relativity and Black Holes
We will spend most of this week acquiring an understanding of the special theory of relativity. We will then discuss the general theory in a qualitative way, and discuss its application to black holes, gravitational lensing, and other phenomena of interest.
Week 8: Galaxies
Galactic structure and classification. Active galactic nuclei, quasars and blazars. Galactic rotation curves and dark matter. Galaxy clusters and large-scale structure.
Weeks 9-10: Cosmology
What we can say about the universe as a whole. Hubble Expansion. Big bang cosmology. The cosmic microwave background. Recent determination of cosmological parameters. Early universe physics.
Instructors
- Ronen Plesser - Physics
Content Designer
Duke University is a private North American research university located in Durham, North Carolina. The university is named after the Duke dynasty.
Although the university was not officially founded until 1924 (its roots go back to 1838). Frequently referred to as the "Harvard of the South", Duke is the most selective university in the American South.
The university is a member of the Association of American Universities, an association which, since 1900, has brought together the elite research universities of North America.
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Coursera is a digital company offering massive open online course founded by computer teachers Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller Stanford University, located in Mountain View, California.
Coursera works with top universities and organizations to make some of their courses available online, and offers courses in many subjects, including: physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, data science, and other subjects.
