This is a 3-credit 4th-year undergraduate-level course. Grad students can take this course as ASTR 503.
Meetings:
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-12:15, Hennings 302
Office hours:
Tuesdays 2:00 - 3:00 pm, or send me email at stairs@astro.ubc.ca
Current important messages:
Projects are due Nov. 20. The presentation schedule is here.
The Harvard ADS astronomy paper search engine can be found here. This will be useful for your project literature searches.
Data for assignment 2 are here.
Required textbook: Astrophysical Techniques, 4th edition, by Kitchin,
ISBN 0-7503-0846-6. It's available at the bookstore.
Paul Hickson's notes are here.
Project sign-up listings are here.
Useful and interesting links, including a few telescopes planned or under construction:
GLAST - the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, specifically the LAT system
ALMA - the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillitre Array
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA; radio)
The Square Kilometre Array (radio)
The Thirty Metre Telescope (optical/IR)
James Webb Space Telescope (IR)
The Virtual Radio Interferometer
The Center for Adaptive Optics at UC Santa Cruz
Gemini telescope adaptive optics pretty pictures
GBT off-axis design
Public-level description of the Arecibo telescope including a ray diagram of the Gregorian dome.
Notes on telescopes and optics from a course at SUNY Stony Brook.
Wavefront maps, etc. illustrating aberrations -- link from Paul's notes.
Ray-tracing simulations of aberrations, etc.
The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics to COBE
Lots of detail on bolometers
The cesium fountain clock at NIST
The GPS system
Hydrogen masers
Lots more detail on time systems
The International Celestial Reference Frame
Program and pdf lecture notes from the 4th International X-ray Astronomy School,
organized by NASA and the CXO Center at Harvard-Smithsomnian. Very good resource for detector info and scientific overviews.
ADS and astro-ph abstract links for several useful review articles -- follow the links to access the full articles (html or pdf).