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| PHYS 141 (Fall) PHYS 142 (Spring) | Introduction to Astronomy and Astronautics I and II Credit: 12 | Instructor: Thomas Gangale |
| This one-year course is a grand tour of the history of astronomy and astronautics, as well as a grand tour of the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and beyond. Topics include ancient ideas of the solar system, the laws of planetary motion and the development of modern mathematics and physics, seasons and tides, calendars, early telescopic observations, the pull of Mars on human imagination, solar system origins, Tsiolkovskij equation, Hohmann transfer orbits, geostationary orbit, human expeditions to the Moon and Mars, robotic exploration of the solar system, Earth impacts and extinctions by comets and asteroids, stellar birth and death, life in the universe, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) programmes, stellar evolution, quasars and black holes, the Big Bang and cosmology, large scale structure of the universe, the future of the universe. This course does not require a formal background in mathematics or physics.
Referents: Astronomy/Physics 109 and Astronomy 112, University of Canterbury Physics 132 and 209, Victoria University of Wellington | ||