Welcome to the Astronomy 161 Lecture Podcasts. This is a brief message from me explaining the podcasts, and welcoming new and old listeners. University. Lectures will begin on Wednesday, 2006 Sept 20, and run through Friday, 2006 December 1. New lectures will appear shortly befor ...Afficher plus
Lecture 2: Astronomical Numbers
Before we can begin our exploration of astronomy, we need to develop a common language for notating large numbers, and introduce the basic units of length, mass, and time that we will use throughout the quarter. We will first re-introduce the basic metric system, explaining how t ...Afficher plus
Lecture 3: The Starry Night
What are the constellations, and how have they be named and used by many different cultures throughout human history? We will review the most basic feature of the night sky, the 6000 visible stars sprinkled about the sky, and introduce the idea of constellations, reviewing their ...Afficher plus
Lecture 4: Measuring the Earth
What is the shape and size of the Earth? This lecture traces historical ideas about the shape of the Earth, from ancient flat-Earth models to the compelling demonstrations by Aristotle in the 3rd century BC that the Earth was a sphere. We then discuss ways people measured the siz ...Afficher plus
Lecture 5: Mapping Earth and Sky
Where are we? Where is someplace else? How do I get from here to there? These are questions we need to answer both on the Earth and in the Sky to assign a location to a place or celestial object on the surface of a sphere. We start by introducing angular units, and use them to de ...Afficher plus