Course plan (updated December 8):

Course grades will be awarded for the following:

Homework:	30%
Midterm Exams, which will take the whole 50-minute class periods on October 8 and November 12:	30% (15% each)
Final Exam, which will be comprehensive, on Tuesday, December 14, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., in A106 (the regular classroom):	25%
Three-page paper, due at the beginning of the last session of class, December 10 at 2:00 p.m.:	15%

Please note:

• Read the chapters before class. Class time is valuable: it is much better spent in informed, active discussion among all of us than in just me talking. It always amazes me: the students who get "A"s are almost always the ones who read the chapters before class; the ones who don't, almost always are the ones who don't.

• Asking questions is also part of active discussion. Please don't be shy about asking questions in class, or during office hours. Remember that the only "dumb" question is the one you didn't ask, that fouled you up later because you didn't ask it!

• As far as class attendance goes, I'm sure I needn't remind you that tuition here is very expensive. Does it make sense to skip class, then? Of course not!

• Of course also, all work that students turn in as their own must really be their own. Proper credit and attribution of one's sources is so important in science, as well as in other fields. I will allow students to collaborate with each other on homework assignments, provided everyone lists their "co-investigators" on their papers. Scientists often do this, and the ability to collaborate well and work as part of a team is a good skill to have, in science and in most other professions.

  However, if you do collaborate on homework, it must be genuine collaboration: not one person doing all the work, and the others blindly copying. That's cheating! Cheating and plagiarism are very serious matters, and the worst possible things for science. What's the point of doing science, creating new knowledge about the Universe, if it isn't honest? My students, of course, wouldn't do that!

  Therefore, while you may do the work together, write up the results separately, in your own words. A dead giveaway is when I get two papers that are exactly the same. Do people who do this think I don't notice it? I certainly don't like it!

• I expect to use e-mail extensively to communicate with you, and please feel free to send e-mail to me. However, all assignments, including homeworks, paper titles and summaries, and papers, must be handed in as hardcopies at the beginning of the class periods in which they are due.

  Hang onto all copies of all work you have done in all your classes, ever. They'll be a big help if, one day, you find yourself teaching a class like this.

• I also plan to use the World Wide Web extensively in this course. I will require you to know how to use an Internet browser and how to use e-mail. Most students will already know this, but if you don't, don't be embarrassed. Please let me know: I'd be glad to give you private lessons during my office hours (MWR 3-5, T 4-5). Here also is a handout covering some computer basics. (But it begs the question: if one doesn't know how to use a computer, how will one get it? Better hand out hardcopies in class...) Although it would be a big advantage for your schoolwork, you need not own a computer, since you may use the computers in the Harris lab (on the second floor of Crawford) and in Evans Library (on the first floor and especially in the second floor lab).

  If Web access is still a problem for you, please come to office hours or make an appointment, and I'll let you use my machine. I won't therefore accept excuses such as "I couldn't use the Internet" or "My browser wasn't Java enabled." This last one was sprung on me last year. The shame is that, if you can run Netscape, you can run Java: just pull down the menu and select "Enable Java."...

• A late penalty of -20% per day will be deducted from assignments not turned in by 5:00 p.m. on the specified day.

• Sorry, but I do NOT give makeups for midterm exams, only for final exams. Even then I don't like to: I can never be sure that a makeup was really fair, since it must be different from the regular exam. If you should have to miss a midterm exam for a good reason, I will void the part of the course grade that midterm would have counted and count the rest of the grade as 100%. Job interviews or illness documented by a doctor's note are good reasons. Athletic events, theatrical or musical performances, visiting relatives, or the surf being up are not good reasons for missing exams, or classes.

• I plan to make this course fairly rigorous, but not a killer. I'm aware that you have other courses, but then, this is Florida Tech, also called "Countdown College": this course is meant to be an introduction for the practitioner.

  In other words, a good amount of work will result in a "B", but "A"s will be reserved for real distinction. I still hope to award many "A"s this semester, since I am very impressed with Florida Tech students.

  Six Florida Tech graduates have already become astronauts. I want it to become more like 50 or 60, composed largely of people in this class! More astronauts than ever will be needed for the International Space Station now being built. Within your working lifetimes, I expect there to be human flights to Mars and the asteroids, Moon bases, and greater things. I expect you to be the very people to explore the Solar System firsthand. Settling it, though, I think may be up to your children...but then, you might always surprise me.

• All grading will be done "on a curve", meaning that how you do relative to everyone else in the class is more important to how your grade is determined than strict percentages, e.g. 90 - 100 is an A, etc. In this class, maybe 80 - 100 will be an A. We won't know until we've taken the exams and carefully thought about the results.

  I have to do this because we will be covering a lot of material at the forefronts of knowledge. This isn't like high school, where everything has been taught for years to hundreds of other people, and so how to teach it has been thoroughly tested by the time it gets to you. We're now doing the real thing: we're not on the sidelines watching science anymore, this is science, and everything is constantly changing and so must be custom-made. I want you all to become first-class scientists, and scientists only get interesting, original results if they work on interesting, original problems. The unknown will play a prominent part in this class! You see, my hope is that, if I show you the mysteries of the Universe, you'll eventually go out and solve some.

  You'll need technical skills to do this, of course, so work hard in your other classes, including chemistry, calculus and higher math, physics, and computing. You'll need every bit of it, and you'll see it all again, I promise!

  College is a lot like juggling. There are many, many different things to do: work, parties, relationships, living away from home, road trips, clubs, sports, etc. The one ball you must not drop, though, is academics: without that, nothing else matters.

  If you all do well in this class, well enough for all of you to earn "A"s, I'll award you all "A"s. The Dean will think it's weird, but I get along with him well. I'll tell him you're a talented bunch, and if I need to, I'll personally argue with him on your behalf.

  On the other hand, "F"s will be awarded for class non-attendance and flagrant neglect of class work - so don't do that, all right? I really hate awarding poor grades. I vastly prefer to see my students do well. My time is so much better spent that way, since students who succeed make much better future colleagues!

  Still, if for some reason you get into trouble serious enough to want to drop the course, such as getting so far behind you can't catch up, don't just stop coming to class and think that will be the end of it. Fill out a drop slip and turn it in to the Registrar: see "Drop/Withdrawal Policy" on pages 15-16 of the 1999-2000 University Catalog, for how to do this. Dropping a class is a serious matter. Try to avoid such a terrible waste of time and tuition money by keeping on top of things - for example, by always reading the chapters before class. Again, I want to see you, my students, do well!

• Florida Tech will not let me award extra credit for supplemental projects. As in real life, you must do your best to do things right the first time!

• Florida Tech also will not allow me to post grades, not even with names removed for privacy, nor to release grades over the phone. If you want to know your grade, please consult the PAWS Web page. Otherwise, you'll just have to wait until the grade reports are mailed to you. Sorry!

• Writing is a key skill for everyone, especially for scientists. No scientific investigation is complete until it becomes known to the world, and scientists do this by writing papers and publishing them. There have been too many important scientific discoveries that were ignored for years because the scientists who first did the work had not done a good job of writing up the results in a way that people could understand.

  I will therefore assign a three-page paper, due 2:00 p.m. December 10, the beginning of the last session of class. Since I take this so seriously, I will let the grader work on her or his Ph.D. thesis that day and personally read and grade every one, so make them good! Having something to say in your paper is important, of course, but how you write it is also important. Good content is so much easier to understand if it's written in a way that's easy to understand. For hints on writing, see The Elements of Style, by W. B. Strunk and E. B. White. This little book should be available in the campus bookstore for only about $3.95, although there is also now an online version. Read it from cover to cover twice a year, and understand it clearly, for the rest of your life!

  These papers may be on any topic in contemporary or historical astronomy or space exploration. Tentative paper titles (you're allowed to change your mind if you later discover something better: this is something I like particularly about science), with a typed or printed short (less than 300-word) summary of your paper topic, will be due at the beginning of class on Friday, November 19.

  Papers must be over two but less than three pages long, typed or better, printed, on standard 8.5-inch x 11-inch paper with standard, one-inch margins, in a readable 12-point serif font such as Times or Computer Modern Roman (not Helvetica, Monaco, or Geneva, which are sans serif and hard to read in large doses).

  Three pages isn't much. I want these papers to be well-thought-out, polished, beautiful little gems that have something to say, not big loads of ore for which it isn't even clear what they're about. It will help to focus on a specific topic. A three-page paper titled "Stars" can't be very good; stars are complex. A three-page paper on star formation would be a little better, but still, star formation is a vast topic in itself. More like it would be a three-page paper on Herbig-Haro objects, or on submillimeter-wave observations of Class 0 sources (the youngest protostars). As another example, a three-page paper on a topic as broad as relativity would not do an adequate job, unless it were something really special. A three-page paper on time would be only slightly better. A three-page paper on why time goes forward, or the postulated quantization of time and possible observable effects (if any!) would be much better. As yet another example, a three-page paper on the Sun would not do our magnificent star justice. A three-page paper on the solar neutrino problem probably wouldn't work, either. What might work would be a three-page paper on the recent discovery of neutrino mass with the Super-Kamiokande detector, and its implications for the solar neutrino problem, or on just one of the many amazing observational results from the SOHO spacecraft, such as the discoveries of the mechanism for coronal heating, flare-induced Sun-quakes, or rivers or tornadoes on the Sun: no kidding!

  For ideas, see the text, including chapters we haven't yet read, as well as current and back issues of popular magazines such as Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, Physics Today, and Scientific American. These sources will also be useful for references for further reading. Articles in these magazines are also what your papers should be like, although your page limit is shorter. Feel free to use the Web for research, too, but be careful of what you use, there's really a great deal of rubbish on the Web. And of course, and as always, when using the Web for research, be sure to attribute your sources, by listing their Web addresses (also known as URLs)!

Some links of interest:

Purely inspirational:

Quotes from People Who Really Should Have Known Better...


Some Rules and Hints for Teachers and Students

Some resources:

The Web page for the textbook: Including chapter objectives, interactive exercises, key words, review questions, and plenty of links. Most of these also appear in the text.

How to Become an Astronaut: Three essays, by Henry Spencer, NASA, and George "Pinky" Nelson, who actually did it (see handout).


A study help: A Glossary of Astronomical Terms, from Astronomy magazine


Hubble Space Telescope Image Archive: Stop by my office, and look at the images from Hubble Space Telescope I've put up in the hall outside. All these are available in the archive, which I'll make heavy use of in class.

Florida Institute of Technology Astronomical Society (FITAS): I strongly encourage you to join and to participate in this society. I'll write more about this below.

However, all of these are difficult and demanding professions. You need to know calculus, since without it you can't really understand physics. Without physics, you can't really understand much of anything in this physical Universe. One can't fake one's way through science courses, as one might be able to in literature courses by reading the Cliff's Notes instead of the real books assigned (and even then, students who do this almost never get "A"s). With science, you either know it - which means you can work the problems, because you understand the principles and not just regurgitate facts - or you don't. I therefore recommend the following helpful guide:

Prof. Simpson's [Brief] How to Study page

Understanding the principles is vital, but don't confuse it with the wrong idea that "the idea is enough." Attention to detail matters: facts are not unimportant, and contemporary American education has gone much too far with this attitude. It will be essential for you to absorb a great many facts about the Universe, both in this course, and in your life, if you are to make much sense of it. On the other hand, rote memorization isn't science: once you know the observed facts, it's essential for you to make sense of them. That is the science!

It's also a harmful myth that if you're interested in science, you must be some sort of genius, and therefore will find science easy. I always had to work at it, myself, and everyone I know had to, as well - and many of them are now distinguished, first-rate scientists. All the sciences, including calculus, physics, chemistry, computing, and astronomy, aren't easy. But at least they are logical: they will yield, to sustained effort. Persistence is the key here, and in so much else of life.

Reading science texts and other technical literature is much more intense than reading other literature. It helps a lot to take notes when reading. It is also essential to read the chapters before class. It always amazes me how often this goes with getting good grades!

Class participation is also essential. College is a lot different from high school: you have to pursue your education actively. I greatly encourage active class discussion - and please, by all means, if you don't understand anything I'm saying, please raise your hand and let me know! Otherwise, we're both wasting our time; teachers are only really teaching, if their students are really learning!

FITAS: the F.I.T. Astronomical Society

I'd like to encourage you all to participate in outside activities that help your careers. I will focus this class on current topics of interest and problems in astronomy, particularly those you may find yourselves working on in the coming years. Another way to keep up with what's happening now that's quite painless, and is in fact fun and interesting, is to read the same popular magazines mentioned above, including Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, Mercury, New Scientist, Physics Today, and Scientific American. Although I recommend it, you need not subscribe to them: Evans Library should have subscriptions to all.

Another great resource for beginning (and advanced) astronomers is the local amateur astronomy club. Sadly, the word "amateur" has a bad connotation in our society, tending to mean cheap and shoddy. However, the word is derived from the Latin verb amare, meaning to love. Amateur astronomers do astronomy because they love it: they don't do it for money, as professionals do.

However, there is no such thing as an amateur brain surgeon. Amateur archaeologists, if poorly trained, can wreck archaeological sites. Why, then, is amateur participation so important in astronomy? There are several reasons:

1) The sky is open to anyone. To paraphrase what Robert Burnham wrote in his famous Celestial Handbook, only a few of the world's mineralogists could hope to own such a specimen as the Hope diamond, and I have yet to meet the amateur fossil collector who has a cabinet displaying a complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton. In contrast, amateur astronomers have access to the original objects of their study; the masterworks of the heavens belong to them as much as to the great observatories of the world. And there is no privilege like that of being allowed to stand in the presence of the original.

2) Amateurs don't have to make a living at astronomy. They therefore don't need quick, flashy results to show off to get their grants renewed, so they can collect their paychecks, this year. This frees amateurs to carry out steady, measured campaigns, such as searching for new comets, and long-term monitoring of stars that vary in brightness.

3) There are over 30 times more amateur astronomers than there are professional astronomers. This means they can observe many more objects. There are only about 10,000 professional astronomers in the whole world. On any given night, only a small fraction of them have telescope time. There are over 50,000 known variable stars. On any given night, therefore, almost all of them go unobserved.

The circulation of Astronomy magazine, primarily for amateurs, is 300,000. If only a small fraction of amateur astronomers would take to observing variable stars, and recording and reporting their observations in a careful, organized manner, think of the science that could come of it!

4) The strength in numbers also helps with another vital function of astronomy: public outreach. People like astronomy - the only other science that comes close to its popular appeal is paleontology. Also, like it or not, nearly all astronomical research has for a long time been funded by the federal government. This includes NASA, Hubble Space Telescope, and most ground-based astronomy. Professional astronomers are getting better all the time with bringing results to the public - Carl Sagan was not the only one - but there just aren't enough of us, and it's unlikely there will ever be. We really need good amateur help!

[By the way, I will consider these reasons why amateurs are important in astronomy as prime exam material. I said to read this carefully!]

I therefore recommend the organization we have, FITAS. They often meet in conjunction with Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) and the Society of Physics Students (SPS), since many of the same people belong to all three organizations. I'll announce in class when meetings will be held.

Something valuable that public outreach will do for you is to have you practice your public speaking. Communications skills, including speaking and writing, are vital in so many professions! All the astronauts I know are excellent public speakers. They need to be, since their very expensive toys are paid for by the public. If you want to be astronomers, physicists, or teachers, obviously you will also have to be excellent public speakers, since you will be doing plenty of lecturing. Remember orientation, when you all introduced yourselves and told everyone something about yourselves? I noticed that although a few of you were already good public speakers (who might have been in the debate club in high school), most of you were shy and unpracticed. Don't be shy. I dislike lecturing to angry mobs, but only rarely have I needed a bouncer. Remember how you get to Carnegie Hall: lots and lots of practice. I rather enjoy performing, and you might as well also, since you'll need to do it enough.

On Reserve at Evans Library. Go to the main desk and ask the librarian for them. All students should have a look at all of these, before the semester is out:

If the Sun Dies, by Oriana Fallaci.
All space enthusiasts should read this from cover to cover. It's a literary gem, and still the best examination of why go into space.

The Case for Mars, by Robert Zubrin & Richard Wagner.
If expeditions do land on Mars in the next 50 years, they will probably use many principles in this book.

Extraterrestrials, Where Are They?, edited by Ben Zuckerman & Michael H. Hart.
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence as real science, which has rather little to do with UFOs.

The following extra-special physics references are so good, you should get your own copies:

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volumes I-III, by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, & Matthew Sands.
Probably the best calculus-based introductory physics notes ever.

Spacetime Physics, by Ed Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler.
Relativity for freshmen.

The Flying Circus of Physics WITH ANSWERS, by Jearl Walker.
The physics of the world around you, presented as challenges to be solved.

Class handouts from Week 1:

A Scale Model for the Local Universe

The Cosmic Calendar

Added September 20:

Flowchart on Standard Scientific Method

Here are copies of Assignment 1 (the survey forms), due as a hardcopy at the beginning of class, Friday, September 3, in plain text.

General principles for solving real-world problems

Here are copies of Assignment 3, due as a hardcopy (with solutions, of course) at the beginning of class, Friday, September 24, in plain text.

Here are three sources of space news:

FLORIDA TODAY Space Online's Space Today

Jonathan's Space Report

NASA Space Science News. Subscribe for free, if you like.

The Department of Physics and Space Sciences home page has a link to the USNO Master Clock, which updates when you reload the page.

For more on timekeeping, here's a link to U.S. Naval Observatory.

Chapter 3, The Moon and Eclipses:

Clementine (DSPSE) spacecraft: Water Found on the Moon


Lunar Prospector Homepage: Lunar Polar Ice Confirmed


So, you want to walk on the Moon?


Eclipse Home Page, for both solar and lunar eclipses, by Fred Espenak (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD).


From that page, here's a map of Total Solar Eclipses in North America, 2001 - 2050


I went to Germany for the 1999 August 11 solar eclipse. My old college roommate, Bill Kramer, led the expedition. Bill now owns and runs a computer firm, and is an avid amateur astronomer.

Probably the image most like what the eclipse really looked like was taken by Jonathan Kern and processed by Wendy Carlos. Another is from Fred Espenak, who runs the Eclipse Home Page at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Here's my own quick description of what really is indescribable. The weather was not good for the stress level. Here's a wide angle shot of the hole in the clouds we observed through, with Venus at bottom left (about 7 o'clock) and Mercury at top right (about 2 o'clock). The sky was much darker than this time exposure shows.

Chapter 4, Gravitation and the Motions of the Planets Handout on The Motions of the Planets.

The essentials to study for Mid-Term Exam 1, Friday, October 8.

Chapter 5: Light and Spectra:

Handout on the electromagnetic spectrum.

Chapter 6: Optics and Telescopes:

An interesting example of Adaptive Optics

Refractors vs. reflectors, and optics

Why CCDs are nearly perfect astronomical detectors

Other detectors: the eye and photography

Added October 24: Chapter 18, The Sun:

Current solar images, by SDAC (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Solar Data Analysis Center), with links to solar observatories worldwide, including National Solar Observatory and the GONG project, and the SOHO, Yokoh, and TRACE spacecraft.

Added 1998 October 27:

Eclipsing Binary Stars, by Prof. Terry Herter (Cornell): Shows two stars orbiting each another, and the light curve for the system.

Binary Star System, by Prof. Terry Herter (Cornell): Shows the orbits and radial velocities of two stars orbiting each another. Run this to understand spectroscopic binaries, it's great!

NEW! Added 1999 November 7: Some references on extrasolar planet detection:

Geoff Marcy's SFSU Extrasolar Planetsearch

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia

Exoplanets, by Eric Mamajek

Handout on The Essentials of Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer.

The essentials to study for Mid-Term Exam 2, Friday, November 12.

The essentials to study for the Final Exam, to be held