Astro 120 Lecture notes - Fall 2019

Note that any original material in these notes is copyright S. Kawaler, and is intended for use by Astro 120 students. They are not to be reproduced, posted on the WWW, or distributed for sale.

A playlist with much of the music played before class is available here

• Lecture 1 (8/27) Introduction to Astro 120
        Music: Drops of Jupiter, Train (lyrics) --- and --- Woodstock, Joni Mitchell (lyrics)
  • A nice collection of images of the Earth from space

• Lecture 2 (8/29) The Cosmic Fishbowl - celestial coordinates and motions
        Music: Northwest Passage, Stan Rogers (lyrics) --- and --- Watch the Stars, Pentangle (lyrics)
  • Shipwrecks from the Franklin Expedition to find a Northwest Passage, the subject of the first of the pre-lecture songs, have been explored as reported by CNN.

• Lecture 3 (9/3) The apparent motion of the sun, the calendar, seasons
        Music: Daylight (lyrics), Allison Kraus and Union Station --- and --- It Was a Very Good Year (lyrics), The Kingston Trio --- or --- Cruel Summer (lyrics), Bananarama
  • Why the Earth turns (you don't need to know Esperanto but it couldn't hurt).
  • The VJ Day Kiss - mystery solved; and here is the actual article.

• Lecture 4 (9/5) Seasons, the Moon's Phases and its Orbit
        Music: Summertime (lyrics), Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald --- and --- Dancing in the Moonlight (lyrics), King Harvest --- or --- My Moon My Man (lyrics), Feist --- or --- Blue Moon of Kentucky, Bill Monroe
  • A Private Universe: Harvard graduates explaining the seasons
  • A view of the Earth and moon from space
  • Lunar phases viewed from 'the other side'
  • the newest of new moons

• Lecture 5 (9/10) The Moon's Orbit; Lunar and Solar Eclipses
        Music: Moonshadow (lyrics), Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) --- and --- Moondance (lyrics), Van Morrison -- or -- You're So Vain (lyrics), Carly Simon
  • Animation of lunar orbit changes over one Saros cycle
  • Abraham Lincoln and the "Almanac Trial"
  • Lunation Movie - and other movies
  • Full Moon rising - and people watching in silohuette by cinematographer Mark Gee
  • Short movie of a lunar eclipse
  • Lunar Eclipse, by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
  • Video of our Aruba solar eclipse expedition
  • Pictures from the Aruba total solar eclipse
  • The 2017 Total Solar Eclipse in the US Midwest
  • Totality video from Fulton, MO - 2017 eclipse
  • The moon's shadow sweeping over us in Fulton, MO
  • Moon's shadow crossing the Earth, viewed from space (August 21, 2017)

• Lecture 6 (9/12) Ancient Astronomy and Planetary Motion
        Music: Maya Love (lyrics), George Harrison --- and --- Because (lyrics), The Beatles
  • How to use Stonehenge to predict eclipses.

• Lecture 7 (9/17) Planetary Motion(s) - from Copernicus to to Kepler
        Music: The Laws Must Change (lyrics), John Mayall - and - Galileo (lyrics), Indigo Girls
  • Quicktime animation of Mars retrograde motion
    • alternate movie from the WWW
  • The Tycho Brahe Museum on the island of Hven, Sweden
  • The Ballad of Tycho Brahe
  • The Apollo 15 hammer-feather drop movie

• Lecture 8 (9/19) Kepler to Newton
        Music: Simplify, Henhouse Prowlers (lyrics) --- and --- Gravity, James Brown (lyrics)

• Lecture 9 (9/24) Newton and his Laws
        Music: Room to Move, John Mayall (lyrics) --- and --- Don't Stop Me Now, Queen (lyrics)
  
  • Newton's First Law, football version
  • The Science of Football (Newton's 2nd law)
  • Newton's Third Law ... and football

• Lecture 10 (9/26) Rocket Science!
        Music: Stairway to Bootleg Heaven, DJ Earworm --- and --- Satellite, Dave Matthews (lyrics)
  • The 2014 MAVEN orbiter trajectory from Earth to Mars
  • Why Mars Climate Orbiter crashed- see, in particular, the next-to-last paragraph on page 6. Ouch.
  • Getting it right: 7 minutes of terror
  • and what actually happened with Curiosity
  • Movie of the Cassini flight plan: Quicktime or MPEG
  • Trajectory for the Hermes from the movie "The Martian" . . . with some more details here.
  • As described in the movie
  • Mercury Messenger trajectory from Earth to Mercury

• Lecture 11 (10/3) Overview of the Solar System and Planetary Guts:
        Music: Solar System, (lyrics), The Beach Boys -- and -- I'll be a-round (lyrics), The Spinners
  • Rotation of the 8 planets - video
  • Rotation of the 8 planets and 2 dwarf planets - video

• Lecture 12 (10/8) Planetary Interiors, Planetary Surfaces I: Physical processes.
        Music: Crash Burn (lyrics), Blues Traveler -- and-- Dance on a Volcano ( lyrics), Genesis Dust in the Wind (lyrics), Kansas
  • Video clip of a milk drop - analogy to a crater formation with a central peak

• Lecture 13 (10/10) Planetary Surfaces II: More physical processes, ages of surfaces
        Music: Fault Lines (lyrics), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers --- and --- I Feel the Earth Move (lyrics), Carole King --- and --- Geology (lyrics), Brad Paisley
  • Real-time earthquake browser
  • Movie of Ranger 9 crashing into the Moon

• Lecture 14 (10/15) Radioisotope dating, and the surface of the Moon and Mercury
        Music: Playing with Uranium (lyrics), Duran Duran ; Radioactive (lyrics), Imagine Dragons; -- and -- Long Time Gone (lyrics), Crosby, Stills & Nash === and === On Mercury (lyrics), Red Hot Chili Peppers
  • Tranquility Base: honoring Neil Armstrong
  • Messenger movies of Mercury

• Lecture 15 (10/17, AZ) Venus and Mars
        Music: Venus and Mars (lyrics), Paul McCartney and Wings, Venus (lyrics), Shocking Blue --- and --- Marching to Mars (lyrics), Sammy Hagar
  • Magellan at Venus - image gallery
  • Valles Marineris flythrough movie
  • Mars Exploration Rovers, one day Opportunity will stop working, perhaps!
  • Mars Express
  • Mars Science Laboratory, a.k.a. Curiosity
  • Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at Mars

• Lecture 16 (10/22, AZ) Planetary Atmospheres, the Greenhouse effect
        Music: Under Pressure (lyrics), Queen and David Bowie --- and --- Billy Breathes (Lyrics), Phish --- and --- Pressure Drop (lyrics), Toots and the Maytals
  
  • Methane leak in California - in the Infrared
  • A year in the life of Earth's CO₂
  • Links on Global Warming and Ozone Depletion
  • Summary IPCC report on global warming (2007 Nobel Prize winners)
  • Video of CO₂ as a function of time.
  • Temperature data: 1880-2011

• Lecture 17 (10/24, AZ) On to Giant Planets I: Interiors and Atmospherese
        Music: Drops of Jupiter, Train (lyrics) --- and --- Call it Stormy Monday, Eva Cassidy (lyrics) (audio of T-Bone Walker) --- and --- Jupter and Beyond, by Gyorgy Ligeti, from 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Movie of Jupiter's cloud motions
  • Hubble Space Telescope images and movies of Jupiter
  • another view with more details of the red spot
  • Rotating Neptune - an HST Movie
  • Links to images of the outer planets from spacecraft, many shown in lecture

• Lecture 18 (10-29) Giant Planets II: Tides, Rings, ...
        Music: Tide is High (lyrics), Blondie -- - and -- Moondance (lyrics), Van Morrison
  Things Shown:
  • Saturn ring plane crossing movie
  • Ring plane crossing with audio!
  • Prometheus and Pandora shepherding a Saturn ring
  • Satellite and ring image links for the outer planets

• Lecture 19 (10/31) Moons, Icy Satellites of the Outer Solar System, and beyond
        Music: Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day (lyrics), Jethro Tull, --- and --- Cold Rain (lyrics), Crosby, Stills and Nash
  • Flyover of Antarctic iceberg region
  • Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn
  • Video of Huygens probe landing on Titan in 2005
  • Paper models of Cassini and other spacecraft.
  • New Horizons at Pluto

• Lecture 20 (11/5) KBOs, Asteroids, and Meteorites - remnants of the formation of the solar system
        Music: Shooting Star (lyrics), Harry Chapin --- and --- Stone Crazy, Kevin BF Burt and the Instigators --- and --- Shooting Star, (lyrics), Bob Dylan
  Related links:
  • the DAWN mission to Vesta and Ceres
  • Minerva at the surface of asteroid Ryugu
  • more spacecraft images of asteroids
  • Earth-crossing asteroids
  • Movie of flyby of Asteroid 2002 NY40, from ISU's observatory

• Lecture 21 (11/7) Collisions - past, present and future
        Music: The Rock, (lyrics), Harry Chapin, --- and --- Packs a Wallop! (lyrics), That 1 Guy
  Images Shown:
  • Toyota Tacoma: Meteor-Tough
  • The Peekskill Fireball
  • Video of the Chelyabinsk Meteorite
  • Actual fall of a chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteor into a frozen lake
  • Impact of something into Jupiter seen by amateurs
  • Meteor Crater in Arizona - compared to San Francisco
  • Info on impacts etc.
  • Impacts 1994-2013, and frequency of impacts vs. size of impactor

• Lecture 22(11/14, TY) Comets and their origins
        Music: St. Judy's Comet, Paul Simon (lyrics) -- and -- The Comet Song, Bjork (lyrics) -- and --- Fire and Ice, Pat Benetar (lyrics)
  • Websites with info and pictures of a variety of comets
  • The Bayeaux Tapestry, panels 15 and 16, and go here for commentary.
  • Movies of Comet Borrelly
  • Videos from the Deep Impact mission
  • Comet colors, charcoal, and parking lots...
  • Comet Wild 2 and the Stardust sample return mission
  • The Rosetta mission
  • Short movie of passage of a Kuiper Belt object
  • Quicktime movie of two comets 'hitting' the Sun.
  • The death of Comet ISON

• Lecture 23 (11/19) Astrology and Pseudoscience
        Music: Aquarius (lyrics), from the musical Hair --- and --- Superstition (lyrics), Stevie Wonder
  
  • Websites discussing astrology
  • Description of The Carlson study on astrology
  • The Carlson paper as published in Nature in 1985

• Lecture 24 (11/21) Our Sun
        Music: Here Comes the Sun (Richie Havens version), (lyrics), The Beatles; Invisible Sun (lyrics), The Police --- and --- Why Does the Sun Shine (lyrics), They Might Be Giants
  • Latest images of the Sun from the National Solar Observatory
  • The Sun Today - from Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft
  • ... and from the Solar Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft
  • Granulation movie
  • Mercury transit across the chromosphere
  • Eruptive prominence movie

• Lecture 25 (12/3) The origin of our Solar System
        Music: Stardust (lyrics), Hoagy Carmichael, Dust in the Wind (lyrics), Kansas, -- and --- The Burning Babe (lyrics), Sting
  • Star formation region viewed by the WISE spacecraft
  • Orion like you've never seen it emphasizing surrounding gas and dust
  • figure showing condensation temperatures as a function of distance from the Sun
  • The planet/dust system surrounding the star Fomalhaut
  • Protoplanetary disk, imaged by ALMA, with gaps cleared by forming planets

• Lecture 26 (12/5) Other planetary systems
    Music: Another World (lyrics): Joe Jackson --- and --- Big Space, Suzanne Vega
  • A hammer throw
  • Links to various extrasolar planet pages
  • NASA's Kepler mission to find other Earths
  • Movie of gap creation and migration
  • The Kepler Orrery IV
  • First image of an extrasolar planetary system - 11/17/2008

• Lecture 27 (12/10) The search for life in the Universe I: Life beyond Earth
    Music: Shallow End of the Gene Pool (lyrics) - Austin Lounge Lizards --- and -- There Must Be a Better World Somewhere (lyrics), B.B. King; Cool Clear Water (lyrics), Marty Robbins; --- and --- Life's a Long Song (lyrics), Jethro Tull
  • Extrasolar planet info
  • Links about SETI

• Lecture 28 (12/12) The search for life in the Universe II - Searches for intelligent life; conclusions
    Music: Englishman in New York (lyrics), Sting; After the Gold Rush (lyrics), Neil Young --- and --- Woodstock (lyrics), by Joni Mitchell, performed by Crosby, Stills, and Nash
  
  • Wanderers: a short film envisioning our future
  • Short video featuring SETI folks and the Allen Telescope Array
  • Links to SETI programs etc.