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Stars Course

Lectures for the course Stars - An introduction to Stellar Astrophysics, for the AMNH after-school program. The course is comprised by 11 lectures, downloadable below as pdf or open office format (Open Office is the open source generic of Microsoft Office). The course was offered to self-selected high-school students, the level is therefore that of a first-year college course. The scope is broad, covering many aspects of stellar astrophysics. The course was developed in collaboration with the astrophysics educator Brian Levine. The course continues to be taught at the Museum (click here for syllabus and course description). Although they have been mildly edited for content and style, the general outline still is this one, below, that we co-designed.

  • Class 1   [pdf] [oo]
    • What is a star
      • Principles of nuclear fusion
        • Nuclear fusion
        • Stellar temperatures, colors, sizes, and masses
        • Spectral sequence
        • Hertzsprung-Russel Diagram
    • Groups of stars
      • Open clusters
      • Globular clusters
      • Galaxies
    • The Milky Way and the night sky

  • Class 2   [pdf] [oo]
    • Math primer: logarithms and exponentials
    • How bright are stars?
      • Magnitudes
      • Flux
      • Luminosity
    • Parallax and distances
    • Thermal radiation
      • Stefan-Boltzmann law
      • Wien's law

  • Class 3   [pdf] [oo]
    • Proper motion
    • Stellar distances and the Distance scale
      • Trigonometric parallax
      • Main sequence fitting
      • Eclipsing binaries
      • Standard Candles
        • RR Lyrae
        • Cepheids
        • Supernovae Ia

  • Class 4   [pdf] [oo]
    • Spectroscopy
      • The three laws of Kirchhoff
      • Hydrogen lines
      • Chemical abundances
    • Photometry
      • UBVRI system of magnitudes
      • Photometric colors
      • Color-magnitude diagram

  • Class 5   [pdf] [oo]
    • Stellar evolution
      • Star formation
        • Stellar nurseries: Molecular clouds
        • Turbulent fragmentation
      • Pre-main sequence evolution
        • Birthline, Hayashi tracks
      • Main Sequence Evolution
        • Lifetime
        • Nuclear processes
          • PP chain
          • CNO cycle

  • Class 6   [pdf] [oo]
    • Evolution of low mass stars
      • Lifetime on the Main Sequence
      • Turn-off point
      • Stellar structure and evolution
        • Energy source and Stellar Structure in
          • Red Giant Branch
          • Horizontal Branch
          • Asymptotic Giant Branch
      • Planetary nebulae
      • White dwarfs

  • Class 7   [pdf] [oo]
    • Evolution of high mass stars
      • Core collapse Supernovae (type II)
        • Neutronization
        • Urca process
        • Core bounce
        • Thermonuclear shockwave
      • Remnants
        • Neutron stars (Pulsars)
        • Black holes

  • Class 8   [pdf] [oo]
    • Nucleosynthesis
      • Neutron capture
        • S and R processes
    • Metals and metallicity
    • Chemical enrichment of the Galaxy
      • Age-Metallicity Relationship
      • Galactic metallicity gradient
    • Stellar Populations
      • Halo, bulge, and disk stars
      • Metal poor and metal rich stars

  • Class 9   [pdf] [oo]
    • Supernovae Types Ia and II
    • Binaries
      • Types of binaries
        • Visual, astrometric, eclipsing, spectroscopic
        • Detached, semi-detached, contact
      • Mass determination
      • Hidden companions
    • The interstellar medium
      • Extinction and Reddening
      • The 21cm hydrogen line
      • Interstellar clouds
        • Absorption Nebulae
        • Reflection Nebulae
        • Emission Nebulae

  • Class 10   [pdf] [oo]
    • Substellar objects
      • Hydrogen burning limit
      • Brown dwarfs
      • Deuterium burning limit
      • Free floating planets
    • Planet detections
      • Methods
        • Radial velocity
        • Transit
        • Microlensing
        • Direct imaging
      • Exoplanet statistics
    • Circumstellar disks
    • The Kepler mission

  • Class 11   [pdf] [oo]
    • Solar Physics
      • Stable vs unstable hydrodynamical equilibrium
        • Radiative and convective zones
      • Magnetic fields
        • Sunspots
          • The solar cycle
          • The butterfly diagram
        • The solar dynamo
        • Differential rotation and meridional circulation
        • Solar flares
          • Magnetic reconnection
        • The solar corona
          • Coronal heating
          • Solar wind