Lectures delivered by Alex Filippenko. 96 lectures, 30 min. each. Course no. 1810.
Contents:
Disc 2. Early studies of the solar system. The rainbow connection ; Sunrise, sunset ; Bright objects in the night sky ; Fainter phenomena in the night sky ; Our sky through binoculars and telescopes -- Disc 2. The celestial sphere ; The reason for the seasons ; Lunar phases and eerie lunar eclipses ; Glorious total solar eclipses ; More eclipse tales ; Early studies of the solar system. Disc 4. A better set of eyes. Galileo and the Copernican revolution ; Refinements to the heliocentric model ; On the shoulders of giants ; Surveying space and time ; Scale models of the universe -- Disc 4. Light: the supreme informant ; The wave-particle duality of light ; The colors of stars ; The fingerprints of atoms ; Modern telescopes ; A better set of eyes. Disc 6. Catastrophic collisons. The Earth, third rock from the sun ; Our moon, Earth's nearest neighbor ; Mercury and Venus ; Of Mars and martians ; Jupiter and its amazing moons -- Disc 6. Magnificent Saturn ; Uranus and Neptune, the small giants ; Pluto and its cousins ; Asteroids and dwarf planets ; Comets: gorgeous pimordial snowballs ; Catastrophic collisons. Disc 8. How stars shine: nature's nuclear reactors. The quest for other planetary systems ; Extra-solar planets galore ; Life beyond the Earth ; The search for extraterrestrials ; Special relativity and interstellar travel -- Disc 8. Stars: distant suns ; The intrinsic brightnesses of stars ; The diverse sizes of stars ; Binary stars and stellar masses ; Star clusters, ages, and remote distances ; How stars shine: nature's nuclear reactors. Disc 10. Black holes: abandon hope, ye who enter. Brown dwarfs and free-floating planets ; Our sun's briliant future ; White dwarfs and nova eruptions ; Exploding stars: celestial fireworks ; White dwarf supernovae: stealing to explode -- Disc 10. Core-collapse supernovae: gravity wins ; The brightest supernova in nearly 400 years ; The corpses of massive stars ; Einstein's general theory of relativitiy ; Warping of space and time ; Black holes: abandon hope, ye who enter. Disc 12. Expansion of the universe and the big bang. Imagining the journey to a black hole ; Wormholes: gateways to other universes? ; Quantum physics and black-hole evaporation ; Enigmatic gamma-ray bursts ; Birth cries of black holes -- Disc 12. Our home: the Milky Way Galaxy ; Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy ; Other galaxies: "Island universes" ; The dark side of matter ; Cosmology: the really big picture ; Expansion of the universe and the big bang. Disc 14. The afterglow of the big bang. The evolution of galaxies ; Active galaxies and quasars ; Cosmic powerhouses of the distant past ; Supermassive black holes ; Feeding the monster -- Disc 14. The paradox of the dark night sky ; The age of the universe ; When geometry is destiny ; The mass density of the universe ; Einstein's biggest blunder? ; The afterglow of the big bang. Disc 16. Reflections on life and the cosmos. The stuff of the cosmos ; Dark energy: quantum fluctuations? ; Dark energy: quintessence? ; Grand unification & theories of everything ; Searching for hidden dimensions -- Disc 16. The shape, size, and fate of the universe ; In the beginning ; The inflationary universe ; The ultimate free lunch? ; A universe of universes ; Reflections on life and the cosmos.
Summary:
Lectures designed to provide a non-technical description of modern astronomy, including the structure and evolution of planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe as a whole. The new discoveries reported in the 2003 course are integrated and recent findings (through mid-2006) are included.
Series:
Great courses (DVD). Math, science, & economics
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.