Users Guide to the Night Sky

Optional evening sessions - meet 8pm outside the physics building.
The weather for Tuesday night (27th) looks awful. As does that for wednesday on the regional northeast forcast. So no observing this week.

To ancient civilizations the sky was a source of wonder and awe. The cycles of the sky - night and day, summer and winter - were an integral part of their life. Even today these cycles still affect us - our bodies follow day and night in waking and sleeping, and the seasons still regulate part of our social lives. This course will look at the origin of the cycles we see in the sky.

Various magazines about the sky have useful home pages on the web, including Sky and Telescope and Astronomy.

The PROVISIONAL title and aims of each lecture are given below, together with links to on-line resources. This page will get added to as term progresses, so keep checking to see what is here (and hit reload to make sure you are getting the most up to date version!).

Read the lecture notes ? Then take the quiz!

Lectures

Lecture 1 Stars	Lecture 2 More stars	Lecture 3 The Moon
Lecture 4 Planetarium show!	Lecture 5 Planets	Lecture 6 Comets, Asteroids, Meteorites and Impacts