Theoretical Astrophysics

AY521 / AY421

Fall 2018

Lecture Notes

Course notes will be posted here as they become available, generally soon after each lecture. Please refer to the syllabus for the chapters in the textbook that correspond to topics.

notes below by date, or in a single document.

2018/8/22 Course overview, celestial mechanics: equations, limitations
2018/8/24 Celestial mechanics 2: simplifying to reduced mass
2018/8/27 Light 1: Parallax, Flux, Magnitude
2018/8/29 Light 2: EM radiation, general flux density
2018/8/31 Light 3: Thermal spectrum
2018/9/5 Filters and Colors
2018/9/7 Special Relativity
2018/9/10 Applying Special Relativity
2018/9/12 Relativistic Doppler shift and beaming
2018/9/14 Light and Matter 1: CCDs, lines
2018/9/17 Light and Matter 2: Ionization
2018/9/19 Light and Matter 3: Ionization example
2018/9/21 Selection rules; Binary Stars 1
2018/9/24 Spectroscopic Binaries
2018/9/26 Eclipses; Stellar Spectra
2018/9/28 Star formation, Jeans mass
2018/10/3 Star formation, protostars
2018/10/5 Protostars
2018/10/8 Protostars; Dust; mass distribution
2018/10/10 Stars
2018/10/12 Stars 2
Movie of evolution of 16 Msun rapidly rotating star
Movie of evolution of 1 Msun star
I will several times refer to figures in "the MESA paper". This paper documents the new stellar evolution software portion of MESA, and therefore includes a lot of useful comparison and summary figures to show it gives expected results.
2018/10/15 Stars: helium burning, end of life
2018/10/17 Intro to general relativity
2018/10/19 General relativity
2018/10/22 GR: intervals, Schwarzchild metric
2018/10/24 GR: Schwarzchild metric, black holes
2018/10/29 Close Binaries
2018/10/31 Close Binaries: accretion
2018/11/2 Planet formation
Goldrich, Lithwick, Sari (2004) review on physics of planet formation
2018/11/5 Galaxies
2018/11/9 Galaxies, spiral structure
2018/11/12 Distance, Universe Expansion
2018/11/14 Expansion, Large-scale Structure
2018/11/16 Active Galactic Nuclei
2018/11/19 Active Galactic Nuclei - as observed
2018/11/26 Cosmology - structure, metric, expansion factor
2018/11/28 Cosmology - curvature, parameters
2018/11/30 Cosmology - dynamics
2018/12/3 Cosmology - cosmic microwave background
2018/12/5 Cosmology - acceleration
2018/12/7 Cosmology - nucleosynthesis and inflation

Assignments

There will be about 5 homeworks distributed in 2 parts each

Assigned homework:

Assignment 1.a Celestial Mechanics Due September 7
Assignment 1.b Light Due September 7
Assignment 2.a Special Relativity Due September 26
Assignment 2.b Light and Matter Due September 26
Assignment 3.a Binaries Due October 19
Assignment 3.b Star Formation and Dust Due October 19
Assignment 3.c Stellar Evolution Due October 19
Assignment 4.a General Relativity Due November 2
Assignment 4.b Close Binaries Due November 2
Assignment 5 Planets, Galaxies, Structure Due November 26
Assignment 6 AGN, Cosmology Due December 7