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Elements of general relativity. Physics of pulsars, cosmic rays, black holes. The cosmological distance scale, elementary cosmological models, properties of galaxies and quasars. The mass density and age of the universe. Evidence for dark matter and dark energy and concepts of the early universe and of galaxy formation. Reflections on astrophysics as a probe of the extrema of physics.
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Principles of gas dynamics, self-gravitating fluids, magnetohydrodynamics and elementary kinetic theory. Aspects of convection, fluid oscillations, linear instabilities, spiral density waves, shock waves, turbulence, accretion disks, stellar winds, and jets.
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A basic course: Structure and kinematics of the galaxy; stellar population concepts; dynamics of stellar systems with and without encounters.
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A broad in-depth survey of state-of-the-art numerical approaches to astrophysical self-gravitational gas dynamics with application to large scale simulation of coupled non-linear astrophysical flows. Finite-difference approaches for Lagrangian and Eulerian astrophysical hydrodynamics and coupled radiation-hydrodynamics. N-body gravitation techniques including direct N-body, P-M, P3M, and hierarchical Tree. Particle gas dynamics methods such as smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH), adaptive SPH and unification of…
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Continuation of 290A. Study of a research topic with an individual staff member.
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Introduction to the flow of astronomical signals through telescope optics and into detectors; subsequent calibration, deconvolution of instrumental artifacts, and analysis. A broad wavelength approach is maintained with focus on shared fundamental concepts. Students "adopt a wavelength band" for assignments and presentations. Analysis and simulation of astronomical signals, noise, and errors.
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Python is becoming the de facto superglue language for modern scientific computing. In this course we will learn Pythonic interactions with databases, imaging processing, advanced statistical and numerical packages, web frameworks, machine-learning, and parallelism. Each week will involve lectures and coding projects. In the final project, students will build a working codebase useful for their own research domain. This class…
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This class is a survey of contemporary extragalactic stellar populations. We will cover such topics as the IMF, ages of stars and galaxies, dust, modeling resolved and unresolved stellar systems, and interpreting observations of galaxies at various redshifts. This class involves reading and discussion of key current and historical papers, and gaining an appreciation for challenges in the field through…
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An introduction to the basic physics of astronomy and astrophysics at the graduate level. Principles of energy transfer by radiation. Elements of classical and quantum theory of photon emission; bremsstrahlung, cyclotron and synchrotron radiation. Compton scattering, atomic, molecular and nuclear electromagnetic transitions. Collisional excitation of atoms, molecules and nuclei.
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A survey of physical cosmology – the study of the origin, evolution, and fate of the universe. Topics include the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model, thermal history and big bang nucleosynthesis, evidence and nature of dark matter and dark energy, the formation and growth of galaxies and large scale structure, the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave radiation, inflation in the early universe, tests…