Class Outline

Unit 1: The Solar System
Intro to the Solar System

Celestial Mechanics
Historical Perspective
Kepler's Laws
Newton's Laws
Kepler's Laws Revisited
Energy and Orbits

Physical Processes in the Solar System
Blackbody Radiation
Gravitational Tides

The Earth and Moon
The Earth's Interior
The Earth's Atmosphere
Earth Impacts
The Moon
The Formation of the Moon
The Moon's Orbit

The Other Terrestrial Planets
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Comparitive Planetology
Atmospheres: Optical Depth, Absorption, and Density

The Jovian Planets
Jupiter
The Galilean Satellites
The Outer Planets
Planetary Rings

Rocks and Iceballs
Asteroids
Comets

The Formation of the Solar System
Star Formation and the Solar Nebula
Making Planets
Odds and Ends

Unit 2: The Physics of Stars

Properties of Stars
Measuring Distances
Stellar Magnitudes
Colors
Dust, Extinction, and Reddening
Spectral Lines
Spectral Types and the HR Diagram
The Doppler Shift
Binary Stars and Stellar Masses

Stellar Physics
The Sun as a Star
The Solar Interior
Powering the Sun
Getting the Energy Out
Other Stars

Unit 3: The Life Cycle of Stars

Star Formation

Stellar Evolution
Low Mass Stars
High Mass Stars

The H-R Diagram of Star Clusters

Stellar Remnants
White Dwarfs
Neutron Stars & Black Holes