| Office: 112 Astronomy Building Phone: (505) 646-6399 Email: jbornak (append "@nmsu.edu") | Office hours: Tues 10:30 - 11:30 Thur 2:00 - 3:00 |
Hello. I'm Jillian Bornak, your TA for ASTR 110G lab section M02. I'm an astronomy graduate student; my area of interest is binary star systems where one of the stars is "dead" (like a black hole or a neutron star) and is eating its neighbor.
Lab is a complement to class, a place to reinforce what you learn in lecture with hands-on experience. I know it won't be fun every time, but I hope that you'll find it interesting. If you can't to my office hours, let me know and we'll arrange a time to meet. I'm also pretty quick to answer questions by email.

You'll work in a groups of 5 to do the lab. The lab goes fastest if everyone in the group contributes to answering the questions. Make sure you have answers to the lab questions so you can write your summary. When you're done the lab, you may leave.
In the lab on the following week, each group hands in a copy of their lab and everyone hands in a summary.

Make sure you bring 4 observatory sheets (found at the end of your lab manual) with you. You'll be sketching what you see, either through the telescope or just naked eye, and writing down the object's information. Don't forget to write a description of what you see: for example, if you look at Jupiter, describe any colors you see on the planet as well as any moons you see. Also, there are a few lines on the bottom where you're supposed to supply some kind of fact about the object. This should be some kind of scientific fact, and you can look in your textbook or go online to find out a little more about what you observed.
Bleh, sounds like a load of extra work, right? The reason we require Campus Observatory is that we want you to get the chance to look through a telescope on your own and to learn a little about the night sky. This is astronomy, as much as learning about celestial mechanics or spectroscopy. The telescopes we have are really good, with no small price tag attached to them, and you have access to them for free! There is something stirring about seeing light with your own eyes emitted from an object 2 million years ago. There is something about staring up at the night sky that captivates us. Feed the hunger! Always look up!
Students may walk-in or schedule a tutoring appointment. An updated tutoring schedule and information regarding setting appointments can be found at the Crimson Scholar Residential Mentor Tutoring website. You may also contact Jeff Long, Assistant Director for Living Learning Communities, (505) 646-5590.

Throughout the lab you'll notice points associated with each question. The lab plus the summary total 100 points. While I will give partial credit, I can't give credit for questions not answered. Please make sure you answer all the questions in the lab. I want the summaries typed because I'm bad at deciphering illegible handwriting (and typing is a skill that is immensely useful in life). While I don't take off for spelling and grammar, if I cannot understand it then I will have to take off points (and so far I've never had to use this policy).
If you feel I made a mistake in grading, bring the assignment back to me and explain why you think it should be regraded. I admit that I do make mistakes sometimes, so it's better to double check something I did than to say nothing and fume about it. If you feel uncomfortable talking to me about it, bring it up with Dr. Anderson and he will let me know.
If you know that you're going to miss lab ahead of time, either for medical reasons or because of a sporting event, you've got options but the trick is to act early. You might have noticed that a lab meets before and after this one. If you have to miss a lab, you can make it up ahead of time by attending one of the other labs, but you must let us know at least a day in advance.

| Lab | |
| Lab #1: Introduction/math lab Please bring a calculator. |
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Lab #8: Parallax
Lab #1 (individual labs) due |
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Lab #7: The Orbit of Mercury
Lab #8 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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Lab #3: Comet Lab
Lab #7 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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Total Eclipse of the Moon tonight!
Moonrise at 5:47pm, partial eclipse begins 6:43pm, total eclipse occurs from 8:01pm - 8:51pm, and partial eclipse ends 10:09pm. NASA article and Mountain Time Zone eclipse chart |
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| Lab #6: Kepler II
Lab #3 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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| Woo! Half-way through the labs! | |
Lab #10: Spectroscopy
Lab #6 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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Lab #11: Sun
Lab #10 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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Lab #12: The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
Lab #11 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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- 3/28 |
Thank goodness for Spring Break! |
Lab #14: Galaxy Morphology
Lab #12 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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| Lab #2: Moon Note that this lab is being substituted in place of the originally planned Lab #16
Lab #14 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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Lab #17: Hubble's Law plus pizza party in class
Lab #2 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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| No lab Second Campus Observatory Notebooks due Lab #17 (group labs, individual summaries) due |
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| Review session Observing Project #1 (the Ever-Changing Moon) due ... or just get it to me before you take the final |
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Space.com is a great resource for easy-to-read articles.
Universe Today is in the same vein as Space.com: a great site to trawl through.
HubbleSite has those fantastic images you've all seen as well as great articles.
Build a solar system lets you calculate your own scale model of the solar system; or, for a more intuitive feel of the size of the solar system, you can visit the Virtual solar system scale model.
While not exactly on topic for the course, I recommend strolling around Atmosphere Optics for a vivid tour of all the amazing things that light can do in our atmosphere.