Week 1

Overview:

You will be responsible for reading Chapter 1 & 2 of our textbook (as well as Chapter 17 section 1). By the end of the chapter you should be able to describe our modern view of the universe, its scale, the objects in it, and our human experience of it.

Chapter 1: Here and Now

- Identify the major types of objects in the universe, from planets to superclusters of galaxies, and order them according to size and scale.
- Describe the purpose of scientific notation and use it to write numbers.
- Define the terms Astronomical Unity (AU) and light-year (LY), discuss their purpose, and use them to describe astronomical distances.

Chapter 2: A User's Guide to The Sky

- Describe the origin of the modern stellar magnitude scale and the relative brightness between magnitudes.
- Describe the celestial sphere as a scientific model, and explain what astronomers mean by angular distance.
- Describe how the orientation of the sky depends on the observer's latitude.
- Describe the phenomenon of precession and its effects.

Chapter 17.1: The Brightness of Stars

- Describe how brightness and apparent magnitude are related.