Catalogue Description: Elementary descriptive astronomy emphasizing appreciation of the earth's relationship to the universe. Information collection and data analysis techniques utilized in astronomy. Lecture discussions cover the basic laws of physics, the solar system, stars, nebulae, and galaxies; the origin and evolution of the universe; the possibility of life throughout the universe. Laboratory exercises in the use of celestial coordinates; the determination of time and position, studies of stellar photographs and spectra. Field trips to area observatories and occasional evening assignments for observation. 4 semester hours

My Description: During this course we shall look up at the stars and answer the question, twinkle twinkle little star how I wonder what you are. We will also find out where to look for what in the sky and why some things are more easily seen in certain parts of the sky than others. We shall assemble a celestial sphere. Since almost everything we know about the cosmos comes from observing electromagnetic radiation (light), we shall spend some time studying and observing the properties of light. Many of these properties are outside everyday experience. We shall see how spectroscopes are used to break light apart by wavelengths and how different gases have unique light signatures (spectra) when excited. We shall assemble a spectroscope. We shall assemble a simple telescope of the same quality as Galileo use in 1610 to revolutionize our understanding of the universe. We will learn how to use an ancient astronomical calculating machine called an astrolabe, the earliest personal computer. With this we can predict the position in the sky of stars and the sun. We will measure the brightness and color of an open star cluster by running a computer program that is a virtual reality. We will measure the period of the orbits of the four bright moons of Jupiter by running a computer program that is a virtual reality. We will measure the orbital period of the planet Mercury by running a computer program that simulates bouncing a radio pulse sent from a radio telescope from Earth to Mercury and back. We shall see how and with what precision distances to planets, stars, galactic star clusters, globular star clusters, galaxies, metagalaxies, and super galactic clusters are determined. We shall see how color, temperature, mass, brightness, chemical composition, and age all affect stars. We shall have fun while doing this.

Clientele: Anyone who wants to understand the bigger universe outside of this planet.

Prerequisite: Willingness to read, think, and communicate.  Any student who may need an accomodation due to a disability, please make an appointment to see me.  A letter from Disability Support Serviecs authorizing your accommodations will be helpful.

Text: Horizons, exploring the universe by Michael A. Seeds as primary text and Telecourse Student Guide Universe the Infinite Frontier by Stephen P. Lattanzio, Joel M. Levine, and Valerie Lynch Lee to guide you in viewing the telecourse videos and in reading the text before viewing the video. To succeed in this course you must do what the Study Guide direct you to do. The Study Guide also has extremely helpful self tests which are vary similar to the middle test and final test that I shall give you. Besides reading the text, viewing the videos, and giving yourself the self test and taking a midterm on Saturday March 22 and a final test on Saturday May 17; you will be doing labs and mailing them to me. The very nature of astronomy naturally lends itself to distance learning, that is also the way we professionals practice it, too. To assist you in doing the labs besides purchasing the afore mentioned text you will also buy from the Rockville Campus college bookstore The College Astronomy Kit by William Luzaderas the laboratory manual. The college astronomy kit includes besides a laboratory manual, a 16 power telescope (similar to the one Galileo used), a celestial sphere, and a spectrometer. You get to build and keep all of this stuff. It is real neat, especially the spectrometer. I will have lab handout to give to you in our first seminar on February 15 from 9AM-12 noon in the planetarium at Montgomery College in Takoma Park. You will also purchase the Janus Personal Astrolabe---Modern Edition by James Morrison. This astrolabe is the best astrolabe made in the last 400 years and is an equal to the best ancient instruments. It also comes with an extensive 40 plus page manual. The Janus Personal Astrolabe was first used by college students at Montgomery College at Takoma Park. All well educated people in the middle ages knew how to use astrolabes. Of course, in the middle ages their were probably no more than a hundred well educated people at any one time alive.

My Expectations:

1. That you read the assigned portions of the text before viewing the videos.
2. That you will ask questions on the text and videos that you did not understand in the Saturday seminars.
3. That you will mail me a number of labs as detailed in our first meeting on February 15.
4. That you will keep your Astronomy Portfolio up to date.
5. That you will take a middle test and a final exam.
6. That you will appreciate our place in the universe.

1. Middle test given March 22 will count 20%
2. Final test given May 17 will count 30%.
3. Laboratory exercises that you will mail to me in a timely fashion 50%. Obviously these labs are very very important!

Montgomery College has a policy of encouraging writing across all curricula. The AS101 Portfolio is a written record of your AS101 study and learning. Keeping this portfolio will help you learn astronomy and keeping a portfolio in any class will help you understand and remember the course material. It will also help you get a substantially higher grade in the course. It will consist of several parts. Your portfolio will be organized in chapters similar to the chapters in the book and or videos and it will have the following subsections in each chapter.

1. Notes in outline form of the chapter. You should also include questions in here about things that you didn't understand when you read the text or watched the video. These questions you will ask me in our seminar or you will phone or email me. I like to answer questions. Make me happy. Everything, definitions and all, should be expressed in your own words. You need to make astronomy real to yourself. Writing about it will help you do this. You have to organize your thoughts to write about them. Write as you read, please. Do not read an entire chapter in the text before summarizing it. Summarize subsections before going on to the next subsection.

2. Vocabulary words defined in your own words. Most of the vocabulary words will be in bold face type the first time they are used in the text. Do not copy the definition out of the glossary. I will consider that plagiarism. For you to really understand the meaning of astronomy's words and terms you must express it in your own words--have faith in your own expression.

3. Notes taken in the three seminars that you do not take a test at on Saturday about things that I say and problems that I work. Sometimes I will tell you things in a different way than in the text, or I may feel that some ideas need special emphases since I plan to test you on them on the exam.

4. Laboratory exercisers that you do outside of the seminars. Always make a copy of your labs before you mail me a copy.

5. A recapitulation or synthesis of all of the important ideas summarized in the chapter. You do this only after items 1--3 are finished. You should use this to study for test taking.

Besides items 1--5, which are done on each chapter in the text, the journal will contain laboratory exercises from The College Astronomy Kit, and some labs that I will hand out written by me that are not in the labbook. Some of the most interesting things we will do all semester will be in these laboratory exercises.

Physically the portfolio can be a ringed binder or a cheaper brad binder. Papers will have to be taken in and out and rearranged from time to time. A spiral bound notebook will not work well. Please bring this to the seminars, always! I will want to look at it from to see how you are doing. Remember this is ultimately a portfolio for you. You can use your AS101 portfolio on the tests! It should be clear and neat enough so that not only I can understand what you are doing, but that you can understand what you did when you look at it ten years from now.

All seminars and regularly scheduled test are in the Planetarium at Montgomery College in Takoma Park from 9 until 12 noon.. The only full feature planetarium in Montgomery County and the only place in the Washington Metro Area that you can take astronomy from within a planetarium. The University of Maryland at College Park does not have a planetarium, they do offer excellent graduate education should you wish to pursue a Ph.D. in astronomy or astrophysics after you have your undergraduate degree in physics, or mathematics, or electrical engineering. They also have regularly scheduled public nights on the 5th and 20th of every month at their observatory on Metzerott Road in Prince George's County. You may want to go to one of their public nights especially if the weather is cloud free. The United States Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington DC is opened every Monday night that is not a federal holiday for the public to look through telescopes when it is clear.

• Saturday, February 1, 7:30PM Lipsett Auditorium Clinical Building of the National Institutes of Health, National Capital Astronomers meeting and lecture Extra Credit opportunity.
• Saturday, February 15, 9AM-12 noon Planetarium at Takoma Park for first seminar. Assemble the Celestial Sphere from the College Astronomy Kit, please bring a pair of scissors.
• Saturday, February 15, 7-8PM Planetarium at Takoma Park public show, "African Skies" Extra Credit opportunity.
• Saturday, March 1, 7:30PM Lipsett Auditorium Clinical Building of the National Institutes of Health, National Capital Astronomers meeting and lecture Extra Credit opportunity.
• Saturday, March 8, 9AM-12 noon Planetarium at Takoma Park for second seminar. Bring the parts of the spectroscope from your College Astronomy Kit , we will assemble and use the spectroscope. Bring your already assembled telescope and a report on observations that you did with it. Turn in both Celestial Sphere labs: The Celestial Sphere and Using the Celestial Sphere to Understand Astronomical Coordinate Systems. We will go to the Science Learning Center (SLC) Science North Room 101 and 102 to start doing the Contemporary Laboratory Experiments in Astronomy (CLEA) lab "Photometry of the Pleiades Star Cluster"
• Friday, March 21, 7-8PM Planetarium at Takoma Park public show, "The Rites of Spring, the Vernal Equinox" Extra Credit opportunity.
• Saturday, March 22, 9-12 noon Planetarium at Takoma Park for third meeting and Mid-term EXAM! Exam covers videos 1-12 and reading in Horizon's plus labs done up to this date. Please, turn in your spectroscopic observations and your CLEA Photometry labs with the completed H-R diagram and an estimated of the distance to the Pleiades star cluster.
• Saturday, April 5, 7:30PM Lipsett Auditorium Clinical Building of the National Institutes of Health, National Capital Astronomers meeting and lecture Extra Credit opportunity.
• Saturday, April 12, 9-12 noon Planetarium at Takoma Park for fourth meeting, but third seminar. Bring your Janus Astrolabe to class we will learn to use this instrument. If you do not bring your astrolabe to class you will have and exceedingly hard time learning how to use it on your own.
• Saturday, April 19, 7-8PM Planetarium at Takoma Park public show, "Black Holes, Gravity to the Max" Extra Credit opportunity.
• Saturday, May 3, 9-12 noon Planetarium at Takoma Park for fifth meeting, but fourth seminar. We will go to the SLC to start doing the CLEA labs "Radar Rotation of Mercury" and "The Moons of Jupiter."
• Saturday, May 3, 7:30PM Lipsett Auditorium Clinical Building of the National Institutes of Health, National Capital Astronomers meeting and lecture Extra Credit opportunity.
• Saturday, May 17, 9-12 noon Planetarium at Takoma Park for sixth meeting and FINAL EXAM! The exam is comprehensive, covering everything: all videos, all reading in Horizon's, and all labs. Please turn in the two remaining CLEA labs "Radar Rotation of Mercury" and "The Moons of Jupiter."
• Saturday, May 17, 7-8PM Planetarium at Takoma Park public show, "The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" Extra Credit opportunity.

Write at least one page around 250 words about what you learned during a talk or clear night view through a telescope at an observatory.

As you may need some assistance in understanding some labs and as three labs are done on the computer and you may not own a computer the Science Learning Center, SLC, in Science North Room 101 has the computer astronomy labs already installed on several computers. Dr. Harold Williams will be in the SLC on Monday from 5 until 9PM and on Saturday from 11AM until 5PM from January 27 until May 12. That is 10 hours every week to help you if you need it. Where else in the world can you get service like that except at Montgomery College!