Astronomy and Astrophysics Honours Courses 2008
Important Dates:
1st semester 2008: February - June
2nd Semester 2008: July - October
Please note that some of the 1st semester honours courses may run slightly into the semester break
50% of the honours assessment in Astronomy & Astrophysics is for a research project. Students are required to do 24 points of coursework for the other 50% of their honours assessment. Up to 24 points (in 6 point quanta) are to be selected from the following table. ASTR 3002, ASTR3007 and GEOL 3022 may be taken if not already taken as a third year subject. Some courses (e.g. Diffuse Matter in the Universe, High Energy Astrophysics, Astrophysical gas Dynamics) may be given in alternate years. A student who misses these courses in 4th year may take them as a graduate course in the following year. Additional 6 cp units may be selected from suitable units in Physics or Maths subject to approval by the Astronomy & Astrophysics Honours Convenor. Possible examples include: A unit from the Honours Physics program. One of the Computational Modelling units in the Bachelor of Computational Science Honours Program. One of the units in the Mathematics Honours program For the Honours degree, students have to take 5 courses in total. This can be either all five courses offered by RSAA (see below) or equivalent honours courses from Geology, Physics or Math.
A minimum of three courses offered by RSAA have to be taken.
Course work counts 50% towards the final honours mark. The Honours thesis has a 50% weight.
1st Semester: start on Thursday 21Feb at 11:00am. Lectures between 11:00 and 12:30 each Tuesday and Thursday from then on. That should have us finishing in mid-April.
Venue: Woolley Seminar Room, RSAA
Assessment:
25% based on attendance,
25% based on assignments
25% based on a research essay, and
25% based upon a 15 +5 min presentation of the results of the research essay.
The essay will be 5-10pp, and is based upon an appropriate literature search. It may be on ANY aspect of the Interstellar Medium. This can be started by the students immediately, but is handed in at the end of the course. Presentation of material based upon an Honours Project is not allowed.
From this work the students will also make an oral presentation to their peer group, which should enlighten and instruct the group on what they have found out. The group will be able to vote on how well this worked for them, and I will use these voting results in the assessment.
The purpose of this heavy weighting on the self-driven research is to develop and home the skills that will be needed, should the students go on to a PhD course in any field.
The course is contained within Dopita & Sutherland, Springer ISBN 3-540-43362-7: "Astrophysics of the Diffuse Universe" (which is also the title of the course). Students are encouraged to acquire a copy of this, and to read the chapters covered by the course.
For more details, contact Mike Dopita
General Information
Course content Web site Assessment Lecture dates, times and places
Completion dates
First half of 2nd Semester
Times and Venue: TBD, for venue details click
ASTR3002 website
Assessment: assignments
Syllabus: Galaxies: classification and dynamics. luminous matter
and dark matter in galaxies. Text book: Galaxy Dynamics (Binney & Tremaine)
For details, contact
Ken Freeman
Second half of 2nd Semester
Times and Venue: TBD, for venue details click
ASTR3002 website
Assessment: assignments
Syllabus: The expanding universe and cosmological models.
For details, contact
Brian Schmidt
1st Semester 2008
Times and Venue: TBD, for venue details click
ASTR3007 website
Assessment: assignments
For details, contact
Lilia Ferrario
1st semester 2007
Time: TBD
Assessment: TBD
Starting date: 2nd semester
For all details (starting date, venue, assessment etc.) see the
webpage of GEOL3022 or contact
Prof Richard Arculus
Last updated: January 2008.
The course will consist of a series of
about 9-10 lectures
and 2-3 tutorials.
The lectures will be
shared approximately equally between Stefan Keller
(Stellar
Evolution), Amanda Karakas (Nucleosynthesis) and Peter Wood
(Stellar Pulsation).
Lectures will be mostly be on Friday
mornings at 9.30-10.30 and
11.30-12.30.
Due to Easter and
the GMT meeting, I propose that
one pair of lectures will be
on Wednesday 19 March
(negotiable if this causes a timetable clash).
This general information
and the assignments will be available at:
http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~wood/Lectures.html
There will be 3 assignment sheets. Course marks
will be based solely on the
three assignments.
Day Times Place
Friday 29 Feb 9.30am and 11.30am
Duffield Lecture Theatre Friday 7 Mar
9.30am and 11.30am Duffield Lecture Theatre
Friday 14 Mar 9.30am and 11.30am
Duffield Lecture Theatre Wednesday 19 Mar
9.30am and 11.30am Duffield Lecture Theatre
Friday 21 Mar Easter Friday
Friday 28 Mar GMT Meeting
Friday 4 Apr 9.30am and 11.30am
Duffield Lecture Theatre
Friday 11 Apr
9.30am and 11.30am CSO Common Room
All assignments
should be handed in
by Wednesday 30 April.
For more details, contact
Peter Wood
*Galaxy Dynamics (Part of ASTR3002) - 3CP
Taught by Helmut Jerjen
*Cosmology (Part of ASTR3002) - 3CP
Taught by Brian Schmidt
Stellar Astrophysics and Dynamics (ASTR3007) - 6CP
Taught by Lilia Ferrario
*Observational Techniques - 3CP
Taught by Paul Francis
*Planetary Geology (GEOL3022) - 6CP
Taught by Prof Richard Arculus and Dr Trevor Ireland from the Department of Earth and Marine Sciences
Utility Courses
These short (2-8 lectures) courses are NOT part of the Honours program but shall help honours
students with Unix, LaTeX, BibTex, Literature Review, Writing, etc.. They are regularly
offered by the
Graduate Information Literacy Program at ANU. Please see their webpages for more information.
Maintainer: Helmut Jerjen (RSAA Honours Convener)