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.