ASTR 100: Introduction to Astronomy
This course is an ambitious survey of astronomy, the science of the Universe beyond Earth. You’ll be learning about some of the objects in our Solar system, namely the star at its center (the Sun) and the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets that orbit around it. Beyond that, we’ll explore exoplanets, stars, black holes, galaxies, cosmology, and the Big Bang. The illustration below attempts to visualize the enormous range of spatial scales involved.
The topics in ASTR 100 are organized into 12 units, each of which consists of 2-3 lectures, a discussion section, readings in the textbook, and an online quiz:
We use two books in this class, a textbook and an exercise book. The textbook is the free OpenStax Astronomy volume, but students do need to purchase a paper or pdf copy of the exercise book, Lecture Tutorials in Astronomy. We use this book for exercises that are done during lectures and discussion sections.