Astronomy Notes

Astronomy Notes

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View animation of cover<br>As a testament to the value of this material, numerous copies of<br>this material (in various stages of revision) are found all over the<br>web. Entering<br>``strobel astronomy'' in any of the internet search engines will bring<br>up a lengthy list of some of the copies out there. If you find<br>an old copy, please let the website manager know of the official Astronomy

Notes website at www.astronomynotes.com .

These documents were created by Nick Strobel for the introductory astronomy<br>courses he teaches. They are copyrighted by<br>Nick Strobel. This website is offered to the net as a resource in astronomy

education. See my copyright notice for fair<br>use practices. You can purchase a hardcopy version of this website!<br>Select the Purchase Book link for ordering<br>information. This website is continually updated but links to pages are STABLE.

Currently these notes cover: a brief overview of astronomy's place in the<br>scientific endeavor, the philosophy of science and the scientific method,<br>astronomy that can be done without a telescope, a history of astronomy and science,<br>Newton's law of gravity and applications to orbits, Einstein's Relativity<br>theories, electromagnetic radiation,<br>telescopes, all the objects of the solar system, solar system formation, determining<br>properties of the stars, the Sun, fusion reactions,<br>stellar structure, stellar evolution, the interstellar medium, the structure of<br>the Milky Way galaxy, extra-galactic astronomy including active<br>galaxies and quasars, cosmology, and extra-terrestrial life.<br>This site also has pages giving angular momentum examples, a quick<br>mathematics review, improving study skills, astronomy tables, and astronomy<br>terms. Many pages now have video lecture versions of the content --see the "Video lecture for this page" link at the top of many of the pages.<br>Links to pages in this website are STABLE and won't break. Although, this site is not as flashy as others, the website structure is the most stable astronomy website anywhere on the web. Links to pages within this website from other external sites have worked since 2001 (that's "forever" in terms of the internet) while the content on the pages have continually updated. Pages are added to the structure for entirely new material and topics while "old" pages are updated, so links to the older pages will still work even as their content is updated. If you know of another website that has been around since 2001 (or longer) with a stable structure that has enabled links from external sites to pages within the website to still work as content has been updated, please let me know.<br>All of the line drawings were done with Create on my old NeXT machine or<br>with Freehand on a wintel laptop and Macintosh or Adobe Illustrator at home. The line art images<br>on the<br>screen are GIF and PNG images. If you have comments about these notes, please email me.

Contents (chapters + descriptions):

Astronomy as a Science and a Sense of Scale.

I introduce astronomy's place in<br>science, and give a sense of the size and time scales involved. Also discussion of the scientific method and how astrology is not a science and what makes astronomy a science.<br>A separate section about the Science-Religion interface and interaction is available on this site.<br>It is not part of the regular textbook. I take a middle road between the fundamentalists on both sides of the "debate"/dialogue.

Method for Finding<br>Scientific Truth. Borrowing from Pine's book ``Science and the<br>Human Prospect'' I discuss the scientific method, correlations, problem of<br>induction, positivism, levels of testimony, empiricism, models correspondence<br>with reality, peer review process, and misinformation and disinformation.<br>Pseudoscience vs. science article. Borrowing from Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World", I take up the subject of UFOs as alien spacecraft. This article is not part of the regular textbook. Other documents on Astronomy Notes about fake science and news: "The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science" and "Fake or Real? How to Self-Check the News and Get the Facts" (from NPR's All Tech Considered: original link).

Astronomy Without a Telescope.<br>I discuss the celestial sphere, motions of the Sun<br>(solar and sidereal days, time zones, equation of time, and seasons), motions<br>of the Moon (phases and eclipses, including my own pictures of some solar eclipses), and planetary motions. Update: additional diagrams and animations for describing phases of the moon.

History of Astronomy.<br>I focus on the rise of modern science in Europe, from the ancient Greeks to<br>Kepler.

Newton's Law of Gravity....