C2900: Frontiers of Astrophysics Research

Spring 2005

This course will introduce selected topics of active research at Columbia University.  Each lecture will describe current research by the researcher who actually did it, with reading materials provided on the web page.  It is important to do the reading before coming to the lecture, as the lecturer will assume that you have read the required material.  In addition, I may be asking you to submit written questions before the lecture.

There is no required textbook, although any good introductory astronomy textbook would be a very useful resource.  Examples:

• Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy by Frank Shu (excellent but not cheap)
• In Quest of the Universe by Karl Kuhn & Theo Koupelis
• The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium,  by Jay M. Pasachoff and Alex Filippenko
• An Introduction to Astronomy & Astrophysics by Zelik, Gregory & Smith
• Universe by Freedman, Kaufmann & Freedman

There will be no final exam.  Instead, either a 2000 word essay (roughly 5 pages) or a 5 minute oral presentation.  Please let me know by April 1 if you will be doing an essay or an oral presentation.  Grading will be PASS/FAIL and done mostly (70%) on the basis of this essay, but class participation in the form of questions during class will also be taken into account (30%).  For both the essay and the oral report, a good way to start would be to look through some of the magazines that publish articles on astronomy and choose an article which interests you.  Read it and then follow-up on some of the suggested reading at the end, search the web, or ask me (or one of the lecturers) about sources for recent developments in the field.  The essay in particular should be more than just a rewording of the original article.  Journals to look at include:

• Scientific American
• Sky & Telescope
• Science News
• Astronomy Magazine
  

Lecture Schedule

Stars and Planets

Black holes and Supernovae

Galaxies and Beyond