Physics 55





Southern Orion: From Belt to Witch
Credit & Copyright: Stéphane Guisard

Explanation: Do you recognize the belt of Orion in this image? The familiar trio of stars, visible to the unaided eye, can be found across the upper left. Otherwise, the southern part of the constellation Orion has taken on a new look in this unusually deep and wide view First note that the lower left belt star, Alnitak, is the easternmost star in Orion's belt. Left of Alnitak is the Flame Nebula, with clouds of bright emission and dramatic dark dust lanes. Directly below Alnitak, a close inspection will reveal the Horsehead Nebula. Farther right and below is the Orion Nebula, M42, itself visible to the unaided eye. The brightest star in the frame, near the bottom right, is Rigel. A bright blue star, Rigel illuminates the ominously shaped dust patch known as the Witch Head Nebula, visible as the blue reflection nebula near the lower right corner. Finally, appearing as a vast red ring and encompassing the entire region, is Barnard's Loop. Humans could see this entire menagerie, unaided, were their eyes about 10,000 times more sensitive.


Once more, I found our weekly image as the April 8

installment of Astronomy Picture of the Day




I will try to decorate this page with a topical astronomy-related image each week.
Images from previous weeks will be collected here


Announcements Homework Lectures Observations Staff and Office Hours Syllabus



Welcome:

Welcome to PHY55, Duke’s introductory class in Astronomy.  In this class, we will be studying, quite literally, everything in the universe.  We will start with “classical” astronomy, studying the night sky and organizing what we see as was done in ancient times.   We will then embark on a journey, starting here on Earth and progressing outward, to study the Solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and the wonderful and strange objects we observe in deep space, such as black holes, quasars, and supernovae.  We will end with some discussion of what scientists know today about the universe as a whole.  Along the way we will introduce some of the methods, theoretical and experimental, that have been used to understand all of this, from Newton’s laws, through our understanding of light and matter, to Einstein’s theory of relativity, and from Galileo’s telescope to WMAP.

This webpage is your gateway to the course.  During the semester I will use this page primarily to post weekly announcements, and will keep it to that so the page loads quickly.  The green links will take you to other pages you may need to visit, where lecture presentations, homework, etc. will be posted.  For more information on the class, see the Syllabus Page.

 

Staff and Office Hours:

Instructor: Ronen Plesser, plesser@cgtp.duke.edu. My office hours are Monday before class 12:00-1:00 pm, in Physics 245, in the hall directly above the lecture room.  Occasionally I will need to miss these and those occasions will be posted on the announcements page.  If you need to talk to me at other times contact me before or after class or by email. Also, feel free to send me email anytime with any question or comment you may have; you may get a quick response if I am free, or a suggested time to meet and talk. If you want to see some (dated) information on my research interests, you can check my web page.

Our TA for the class is Ms. Shangying Wang. You can reach her at sw57@phy.duke.edu. Shangying's offfice hours will be Tuesday 1:00-3:00pm in Physics 274C.

Ms. Ariana Minot will be the observation TA for the class, she will assist you in preparing for observation sessions and carrying them out, and will grade your observation reports. Ariana can be reached at ariana.minot@duke.edu.



Announcements for week of April 14 (Announcements from previous weeks) :



  1. Reading: .This week we will quicky discuss galaxies, following Chapters 23-24. We will not spend much time at all on chapter 25, despite the fascination of quasars, but will move quickly to begin our discussion of Cosmology.

  2. Observations: The Wednesday group should be done observing. Finish up your lab reports and hand them in. Sunday and Monday groups are now behind. Tuesday and Wednesday this week look to be good observing days. We will be going out both nights and I encourage everyone to try to make both nights and finish off the observation section of the course. To make this easier, we will leave at 10:30pm from the Physics lounge. Please check the Observation page for the two relevant lab sheets; note that lab 3 requires some preparation!

  3. Quiz: We will have our last quiz in class on Wednesday. This will cover chapters 21-22.

  4. Olbers' Paradox: I promised a solution to this and we will discuss it, probably on Wednesday. For a surprising answer to the question of who was the first to come up with essentially the correct answer, check out Eureka by Edgar Allen Poe!