For readings from Ryden & Peterson (small blue book), go here instead.

The following are readings from Carroll & Ostlie (= CO = big orange book).


By Tuesday 1/22, please read:

• CO: Sections 2.1-2.3 on orbital motion. All of this is review of material seen before in Astro 7A (and other physics classes). You are not responsible for the derivations, but you should know how to use equations (2.3), (2.5), (2.6), (2.17), (2.30), (2.35), and (2.37).

By Thursday 1/24, please read:

• CO: Section 19.2 on tidal forces.

By Tuesday 1/29, please read:

• CO: Skim Section 18.1 on the Roche potential. Do not worry about the derivations but do appreciate Figures 18.3 and 18.4. Work out Example 18.1.2.

By Thursday 1/31 (PS 1 due), please read:

• CO: Skim Sections 18.2-18.4, but pay close attention to pages 662-664, 668-671.

By Tuesday 2/5, please read:

• CO: Skim Sections 18.5-18.7, but pay close attention to discussion related to (18.35).

By Thursday 2/7, please read:

• CO: "Generating Luminosity through Accretion" starting on the bottom of page 1110 through the bottom of page 1112.

By Tuesday 2/12, please read:

• CO: Very lightly skim 28.1 through to page 1098, but know what the range of quasar luminosities is, as discussed toward the bottom of page 1097.

By Thursday 2/14, please read:

• CO: Pages 1109-1110 on rapid variability and the implied sizes of AGN. Pages 1116-1118 on the broad-line region and reverberation mapping.

By Tuesday 2/19, please read:

• CO: Superluminal motion: pages 1125 through 1128.

By Thursday 2/21, please read:

• CO: Pages 341-342 on the Eddington luminosity.

By Tuesday 2/26 and Thursday 2/28, please catch up on all the reading in preparation for the exam.

By Tuesday 3/5, please read:

• CO: Pages 959-962 on dynamical mass determination using the virial theorem, but note that the treatment on page 960 is actually for the "bulge" mass (or any cluster of stars NOT dominated by a central black hole). The textbook mistakenly uses equation (25.13) for determining the mass of the central black hole when really it is appropriate for the mass of the bulge. Use the lecture to see where they went wrong.

By Thursday 3/7, please read:

• CO: Pages 613-617 on Einstein's equivalence principle, paying special attention to the bending of light in a gravitational field (do not bother with page 618).

By Tuesday 3/12 and Thursday 3/14, please read:

• Course handouts on gravitational lensing from Bradt's textbook, "Astrophysics Processes"

By Tuesday 3/19, please read:

• CO: Skim all of 24.2 on the contents and structure of our Galaxy.

By Thursday 3/21, please read:

• CO: Pages 412-413 on Jeans criterion for gravitational collapse. Also page 240 as a refresher on collision cross section and mean free path.

For Spring Break:

• Please catch up on any readings or get a head start on future readings.

By Tuesday 4/2, please read:

• CO: Pages 908-909 stopping at Oort's first equation (24.37). Also pages 914-918 on the tangent point method and the inference of dark matter from flat rotation curves.

By Thursday 4/4, please read:

• CO: Pages 951-955 for more on rotation curves, plus the Tully-Fisher relation, but ignore equations (25.5)-(25.9). The argument on page 955 for why L scales with V^4 (Tully-Fisher) is worth reviewing. Also page 987 on the Faber-Jackson relation.

By Tuesday 4/9, please read:

• CO: Pages 1038-1044, and 1048-1051 on the distance ladder. Also pages 919-922 on more methods of distance determination, especially the moving cluster method.

By Tuesday 4/16, please read:

• CO: Section 27.2 on Hubble expansion.

By Thursday 4/18, please read:

• CO: Pages 1144-1154 on comoving coordinates, curvature, and critical density.

By Tuesday 4/23, please read:

• CO: Pages 1160-1162 and pages 1190-1197 on the Friedmann equation.

By Thursday 4/25, please read:

• CO: Pages 1162-1166 on the cosmic microwave background. Also pages 1170-1175 on the transition from radiation dominated to matter dominated universe.

By Tuesday 4/30, please read:

• CO: Pages 1177-1183 on big bang nucleosynthesis and recombination.

By Thursday 5/2, please read:

• CO: Skim Section 30.1 on inflation.

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Last modified: Tue Aug 21 15:02:01 PDT 2012