Lecture 1: The Universe: a guided tour

Further reading

For the whole course

• For astronomical images, you can't do better than the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" website, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html. Not only does this have a fabulous archive of the most amazing pictures (and a new one every day), each image also has links to many other interesting sites where you can follow up the topic. I've used APOD as the source for many of the images here, mostly because it's so convenient. If you prefer to have your pictures in a form you can hold (and show off to friends), a selection has been published as a book, in "Universe: 365 Days" by R. J. Nemiroff and J. T. Bonnell (Harry N. Abrams, 2003), with a follow-up volume called "Astronomy: 365 Days" (2006)
• There are many excellent introductory-level texts which cover the material in this course. A good example is "Horizons: Exploring the Universe" by Michael A. Seeds (Brooks/Cole, 2000); or the text we use for our first-year introductory astronomy course is "The Cosmic Perspective" by Bennett et al. (Pearson, 2010)
• NASA has a site called "Imagine the Universe", http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html which is a good place to start for finding out about all things astronomical. It also has excellent links to other places on the Web to find information.

For tonight's lecture

• "Imagine the Universe" has a nice page about the electromagnetic spectrum: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html
• For more galaxies and other objects in many wavelengths, take a look at IPAC's "The Multiwavelength Astronomy Gallery", http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/multiwavelength_astronomy/multiwavelength_museum/; or the "Multiwavelength Milky Way", http://mwmw.gsfc.nasa.gov/
• Mike Brown, the discoverer of Eris, has an excellent blog about scale in the Solar System, and how hard it is to depict planetary scales accurately, at http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2009/08/planetary-placemats.html
• There's a lovely book on the same topic: "Sizing up the Universe: The cosmos in perspective" by J. Richard Gott and Robert J. Vanderbei (National Geographic, 2011). It's like a meditation about size and scale, and the centrepiece is their "Logarithmic Map of the Universe" - a version of which can be found at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/ (though not as pretty). xkcd has a similar idea in the cartoon just called "Height" http://xkcd.com/482/
• The Galaxy Zoo project is a "citizen science" project where members of the public assist in research by classifying galaxies observed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/. There are other associated projects: classifying features on the Moon (https://www.zooniverse.org/project/moonzoo), finding planets around other stars (https://www.zooniverse.org/project/planethunters), and classifying Hubble galaxy pictures (https://www.zooniverse.org/project/hubble)
• Hanny van Arkel has her own blog, where she talks about the discovery of her voorwerp: http://www.hannysvoorwerp.com/

Source for images

• Title image: The barred spiral galaxy NGC 613, taken by ESO's Very Large Telescope. From ESO Press Release, 19 December 2003 
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2003/phot-33-03.html
• Eta Aquarid & Milky Way Reflections: image by Mike Taylor, from APOD 2014 May 9 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140509.html
• Earth: View of the Earth from space, Eastern hemisphere, from "The Blue Marble: True-color global imagery at 1 km resolution" 
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble
• Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars: from NASA Planetary Photojournal, http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00407
• Cassini view of Jupiter: from NASA Planetary Photojournal, http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02873
• Asteroid Ida and its moon Dactyl: from Views of the Solar System by Calvin J. Hamilton http://www.solarviews.com/cap/ast/idamnclr.htm
• Callisto (second largest moon of Jupiter): from NASA Planetary Photojournal, http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03456
• Hyperion (moon of Saturn): from APOD 2013 Jun 30 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130630.html
• Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: from the JPL Rosetta site http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/images/comet-67p/churyumov-gerasimenko
• Comet: Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, from APOD 2000 December 27 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001227.html
• Sun: APOD 2003 July 29 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030729.html
• Eagle nebula: APOD 1997 January 19 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970119.html
• Star forming region M43, APOD 2015 Jul 10 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150425.html
• Keyhole Nebula: Hubble Heritage Project, http://heritage.stsci.edu/2000/06/index.html
• Cluster and Starforming Region Westerlund 2 APOD 2015 April 25 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150425.html
• Open cluster: M11 APOD 2003 January 22 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030122.html
• Planetary nebula: The Helix Nebula APOD 2014 Oct 12 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141012.html
• Cat's Eye Nebula: APOD 2014 Oct 12 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141012.html
• Artist's interpretation of the white dwarf star H1504+65: from "Naked White Dwarf Shows its Dead Stellar Engine" http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040705.html
• Stars in Scorpius: from APOD 2012 September 12, http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120912.html
• Stars and dust in the Milky Way: from Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2003 September 28, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030928.html
• Spiral galaxy: M51, from the Hubble Heritage Project, http://heritage.stsci.edu/2005/12a/index.html
• Group of galaxies: the Hickson Compact Group HCG 87; APOD 1999 September 6 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990906.html
• Virgo cluster: APOD 2015 Aug 4 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150804.html
• Hercules cluster: APOD 2014 June 25 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140625.html
• Sheets and bubbles of galaxies: from the Illustris Project http://www.illustris-project.org/explorer/
• Distance ladder: from Spitzer mission pages http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/pia15818_prt.htm
• Nine planets: Solar system montage, PIA01341 from the NASA Planetary Photojournal http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01341
• Planets and sun to scale: from IAU Draft Definition of "planet" http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/detail/iau0601/
• Scale model of the Solar System: from "The Thousand-Yard Model" by Guy Ottewell http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html
• Updike: quoted in Hirshfeld, "Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos", p. 68
• Quasar image: from "High Redshift Quasars in the ING Wide Field Survey", http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/newsletter/news4/science1.html
• Distances of stars in the Southern Cross: from "Distances" by Peter Caldwell, http://users.netconnect.com.au/~astronet/dist.html. Used with permission
• Electromagnetic spectrum: from "Imagine the Universe" http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html
• Wavelength: from "Cool Cosmos", http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/cosmic_reference/emspec.html
• Wavelength as a function of temperature: from Astro11230 by Richard McCray http://cosmos.colorado.edu/cw2/courses/astr1120/text/chapter1/lesson1.html
• Atmospheric transmission from Wikipedia: Space observatory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_observatory. Current astronomical missions: from http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/astrolist.gif. NASA Great Observatories: from Chandra http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/illustrations/elec_mag_spec.html
• Wavelength scales: from "Cool Cosmos" page, http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/cosmic_reference/emspec.html
• Multi-wavelength images of Cen A: from "The Many Faces of Centaurus A", http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~hcs/Cen-A/cen-a-pictures.html
• Multi-wavelength images of M51: from Angel Lopez-Sanchez http://oldweb.aao.gov.au/local/www/alopez/multiwave.html
• Prism: from "How Stuff Works" http://science.howstuffworks.com/question41.htm
• Blackbody spectrum: from "Explorations" by Thomas T. Arny, Fig. 3.6 http://www.mhhe.com/physsci/astronomy/arny/instructor/graphics/ch03/0306.html
• Fraunhofer lines: from "Quantum Physics" by S. Raychaudruri, http://home.iitk.ac.in/~sreerup/BSO203.html
• Types of spectra: from "Explorations" by Thomas T. Arny, Fig. 3.15 http://www.mhhe.com/physsci/astronomy/arny/instructor/graphics/ch03/0315.html
• Doppler shifts: from "Explorations" by Thomas T. Arny, Fig. 3.18 http://www.mhhe.com/physsci/astronomy/arny/instructor/graphics/ch03/0318.html
• Red and blue shifts: from "Above the Skies: An exploration into our universe through animated spectroscopy", http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~efortin/thesis/html/index.shtml
• Hanny's Voorwerp: from APOD 2008 June 25 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080625.html and 2011 February 10 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110210.html. Explanation sketches from HubbleSite release STScI-2011-01 http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/01/

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Last updated 11 September 2012