A few pics from our mystery field trip

Assignment #7

In preparation for the upcoming class meeting on November 16, here is Assignment #7.

Plan for the remainder of the term:

11/16 --
The Palomar Transient Factory
Careers and minority/women issues in Astronomy
Guests: Dr. Mansi Kasliwal, Professor John Johnson

11/23 --
Day before Thanksgiving; no class

11/30 --
Last class meetings; term papers and presentations due
Guest: Professor Wal Sargent

12/03 --
Field trip to Mt. Wilson Observatory. Meet at 9am in front of Cahill.

LaTeX resources

Since you guys will be writing your term papers using LaTex, I thought I should collect some resources for you to ease getting into using LaTeX.

• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX : Wiki Books introduction to LaTeX. 
• One great easy way to try out LaTeX pointed out to me by Prof. John Johnson is: http://docs.latexlab.org/
  It's basically a LaTeX implementation for google docs and works fully online without you having to install anything on your machine.
• Information on how to install LaTeX  on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
• Information about how to deal with the bibliography/references.
• More tutorials: here,  here, and here.
• More reference / deeper intro material: here

I have put together a tarball (What's a tarball?) with template files for your term paper. The tarball can be downloaded from here.
It contains the latex file mypaper.tex, the bibtex bibliography file mypaper.bib and an image that will be included in the document.
The first thing you should to is to use a text editor to look at the .tex and the .bib files!

Assignment #6 and updates

Hi all,

Assignment #6 is available for download.

Links to reading:

• Thermonuclear Supernovae by The Astrophysics Spectator
  http://www.astrophysicsspectator.com/topics/supernovae/SupernovaeThermonuclear.html
• How to Blow Up A Star by W. Hillebrandt, H.-T. Janka and E. Muellerller. Scientific American, October 2006. (Note: You have already looked at this article in the context of core-collapse supernovae; now look at it again for the thermonuclear supernova perspective).
  http://bit.ly/tPYkf1
• Type Ia Supernovae: Their Origin and Possible Applications in Cosmology by K. Nomoto, K. Iwamoto, & N. Kishimoto. Science, 276, 1378, 1997. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/276/5317/1378.full.pdf
• OPTIONAL (advanced): Type Ia Supernova Explosion Models} by W. Hillebrandt  & J. C. Niemeyer, Annual Review in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 38, 191, 2000.
  http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.astro.38.1.191

Update on the term project:

Based on the feedback you have provided in the anonymous FS 001 survey, I have decided to change the term project. Your charge is now:

• Using LaTex, write a 5-page (double spaced) term paper on the kind of explosion you had picked for the video. Continue to work in groups of two. Use proper citation and bibliography.
• Prepare a 20-minute presentation based on your choice of explosion (the same you discuss in on your paper).

Both things are due in the final class meeting on 11/30.

Assignment #5 and updates

Hi folks,

assignment #5 (due on Wed, Nov 2, 2011) is available for download.

Important: The date for the field trip to Mt. Wilson has now moved to December 3!.

Here are the links to the literature that will prepare you for class:

The Brightest Explosions in the Universe, by N. Gehrels, L. Piro, and P. Leonard.
Scientific American, December 2002. http://bit.ly/sA7Tpi

Gamma-Ray Bursts: A Supernova Connection, by D. Hartmann,
Nature Physics, 6, 241, 2010,
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v6/n4/full/nphys1629.html

Optional reading (advanced stuff):
The Supernova Gamma-Ray Burst Connection, by S. Woosley & J. Bloom,
Annual Review in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 44, 507, 2006,
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006ARA%26A..44..507W 

Assignment #4 and slides from last meeting

Hi all,

sorry for the delay.

Here are Peter Kalmus's slides about LIGO and SGRs: download slides

Assignment #4: download

Links to papers / videos:

About Swift and GRBs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUluDfJVMJ8

NASA/Sonoma web page on gamma-ray burst:

http://swift.sonoma.edu/about_swift/grbs.html 

  

Gamma-Ray Bursts: Accumulating Afterglow Implications, Progenitor Clues, and Prospects, by Peter Mészáros (appeared in Science Magazine, January 2001)

http://bit.ly/o7hcho 

Short Gamma-Ray Bursts, by Stephan Rosswog (appeared in Scinece Magazine, January 2004): 

http://bit.ly/r0ObGW  

A very good year for explosions, by Robert Irion (appeared in Science Magazine, January 2006) on a series of discoveries on (short) GRBs made in 2005.

http://bit.ly/mSf1fr

 

Assignments and Announcements

The slides from last meeting are the same as those posted for the previous meeting: slides
Luc Dessart's slides on lightcurves and spectra can be found here: Luc's slides

The assignment for next week can be downloaded here: assignment 3

The links to the videos/articles you should watch in preparation for next week's meeting on LIGO are here:

Einstein's Messengers
E & S Article on LIGO
Ripples on a Cosmic Sea (by Shane Larson)
Magnetars -- a Scientific American article by Kouveliotou, Duncan, and Thompson

I will be out of town next week and the discussion will be led by Dr. Peter Kalmus of LIGO.

REMINDER: Please fill out the FS001 survey if you have not done so yet!