From Planets to the Cosmos
Astronomy 1102, From Planets to the Cosmos, is an overview of astronomy from our solar system to the universe as a whole. It is a General Education (GE) Physical Science course in the Natural Science category. The goals of courses in this category are for students to understand the principles, theories, and methods of modern science, the relationship between science and technology, the implications of scientific discoveries and the potential of science and technology to address problems of the contemporary world.
Optional Textbook: Astronomy (Fraknoi, Morrison, & Wolfe)
Astronomy is an open textbook available free online from OpenStax.org
Astronomy 1102 will meet these expected outcomes by covering three overarching and interconnected themes:
- The Long Copernican Revolution: The discovery of the nature of our solar system and planetary systems around other stars, the physics of gravity.
- The Lives of Stars: The nature and evolution of stars and the origin of the elements we find in the universe, the physics of light.
- The Cosmos: The history of galaxies and the universe, evidence for the Big Bang, and the structure of the universe on its largest scales.
This course attempts to convey a number of the facts that astronomers and astrophysicists have learned about these topics, to describe the outstanding scientific problems that are the focus of current research, to illustrate ways in which physical principles are used to understand the universe, and to show how scientific theories are developed and tested against observations.
The links below will take you to the lecture notes and video transcripts for each of the lectures.
Open Online Course Version
From Planets to the Cosmos is now available as a free open course on OSU’s new ScarletCanvas online learning platform:
From Planets to the Cosmos on ScarletCanvas
The course went live on 2021 February 10.
Introduction
Course Overview and Tour of the Cosmos – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Unit 1: The Long Copernican Revolution
Measuring Earth & Sky – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Celestial Motions – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Greek Astronomy – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Nicolaus Copernicus – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Tycho Brahe & Johannes Kepler – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Galileo Galilei & The Telescope – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Isaac Newton – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Orbits – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Solar System – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Discovering Exoplanets – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Properties of Exoplanets – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Pale Blue Dot – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Unit 2: The Lives of Stars
Light the Messenger – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Matter & Light – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Observed Properties of Stars – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Internal Structure of Stars – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
How Long Will the Sun Shine? – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Energy Generation & Transport in Stars – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Main Sequence – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Star Formation – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Evolution of Low-Mass Stars – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Evolution of High-Mass Stars – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Supernovae – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Extreme Stars: White Dwarfs & Neutron Stars – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Black Holes – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Tests of Stellar Evolution – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Unit 3: The Cosmos
The Discovery of Galaxies – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Milky Way & Andromeda – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Galaxies, Clusters, & Superclusters – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Scale of the Cosmos – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Newton & Einstein – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Curved Space – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Expanding Universe – Lecture Notes and Video Transcripts
The Big Bang – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Tests of the Big Bang – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
Dark Matter & Dark Energy – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Birth of the Universe – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript
The Fate of the Universe – Lecture Notes and Video Transcript