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.
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.