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Lecture
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Welcome to the new term and to the course Highlights of Astronomy!
We started on Chapter 1. It is advised to be prepared for the lectures by reading the material that will be covered in class in advance. Please read all of Chapter 1. We learned about a scaled version of the solar system where the sun is shrunk to the size of 1 cm. Do you remember where the planets are located in such a scaled-down solar system and how big they are? We were introduced to the power of 10 notations and to constellations. Click here for likely the worlds earliest astronomical engraving. We learned about the geocentric equatorial coordinate system used for giving positions of celestial objects (right ascension :RA, declination: dec. or decl.). We learned about different time definitions and visualized the vernal equinox. We also learned about the precession of the spin axis of Earth.
13 January 2022
We learned about the ecliptic, equinoxes and solstices.
18 January 2022
We looked at the moon and its orbit around Earth. We tried to understand the eclipse of the sun and the lunar occultation.
19 January 2022 tutorial
20 January 2022
We learned about the motion of planets and how Ptolemy interpreted the retrograde motion of Mars. Then Copernicus
introduced the heliocentric system. Do you remember how he computed the sidereal orbital period of a planet? Kepler introduced his three laws.
Do you remember the three laws? We learned about Galileo's discoveries of the phases of Venus and four moons of Jupiter. Do you remember
how these discoveries supported the heliocentric view of the orbits of planets. Then Newton "invented" the force. He introduced his three laws and the universal law of gravitation. While Kepler's third law is only applicable for orbits around the Sun, Newton's equivalent law is applicable everywhere in the universe. Do you remember how P is related to a? We started on Chapter 3.