Lecture Series

Each of these pages seeks to summarize a discussion guided by the accompanied slides that was given during an informal lecture to the Observatory Group. The language and slides complement each other and may not stand well on their own. Suggest edits by emailing observatory@umbc.edu .

1. Positional Astronomy
   1. Celestial Sphere
   2. Local Horizon Coordinate System
   3. Equatorial Coordinate System
   4. Sidereal Time
   5. Sidereal Rate
   6. Motion
      1. Proper
      2. Transverse, Radial, Space/True
2. Telescope Optics
   1. Refraction
   2. Reflection
   3. Focal Length
   4. Angular Resolution
      1. Focal Length-Plate Triangle
      2. Diffraction Limit
      3. “Resolved”
      4. Rayleigh Criterion
      5. Astronomical Seeing
      6. PSF
      7. FWHM
      8. Gaussian Profile
      9. Other Profiles
   5. Field of View
3. Radiation Field
   1. Radiance
   2. Flux
   3. Luminosity
   4. Conservation of Radiance
      1. Beer-Lambert Law
      2. Source Function
      3. Thermal & Black Body Radiation
   5. Magnitude Systems
      1. Pogson Ratio
4. Cosmic Distance Ladder
   1. Radar Ranging
   2. Parallax
   3. MS Fitting
   4. Variable Star Fitting
   5. Type Ia Supernovae
   6. Hubble's Law
5. Detector Basics
   1. Detector Equation
   2. Calibration Frames
   3. Calibration to Top-of-Telescope
   4. Calibration to Top-of-Atmosphere
   5. Instrument Magnitude
   6. Use of Landolt Fields
   7. Detector Zero Point
6. Metallicity of Stars
   1. Pop I/II/III
7. Effective Temperature of Stars
8. Python at CLI, BASH, HPCF
9. Statistics
   1. Binomial Coefficients, Binomial Distribution, Poisson Distribution, Gaussian Distribution
   2. Central Limit Theorem
      1. Gaussian/Normal Distribution
   3. Linear Least Squares and Gradient Descent
10. How to Research
    1. Reading a paper
    2. Identifying next steps
    3. Reproducibility
       1. Keeping good notes!