ASTR4410: Modern Astrophysics

Lecture notes for ASTR4410 Modern (Stellar) Astrophysics at Valdosta State University. This course is designed using An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll & Ostlie (2007), where it will include summaries of the course material and code implementation/exercises. The course is divided into three sections (Introduction; Stellar Interiors & Star Formation; and Stellar Evolution & Death) that will cover 4 chapters for each section from the textbook. In addition to homework assignments and exams, each student will give an in-class presentation using information from an instructor-assigned:

• python tutorial using astronomy

and

• a review paper from Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics

where both presentations will be assessed by both the instructor and fellow students. The presentation using the astropy tutorials must explain to the class: how to use the relevant tools and connect to the material discussed in class.

Python Tutorials

• Astropy:

  • Modeling 2: Create a User Defined Model using astropy.modeling

  • Analyzing UVES Spectroscopy with Astropy

  • Analyzing interstellar reddening and calculating synthetic photometry

  • Read in catalog information from a text file and plot some parameters

  • Modeling 1: Make a quick fit using astropy.modeling

  • Synthetic Images from simulated data

  • Viewing and manipulating FITS images

  • CCD Data reduction

• Astronomical Data in Python

• Lightkurve: exoplanet examples

• PlanetPlanet: exoplanet lightcurves

Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics (AARA)

• Chemical Composition of the Sun (Asplund et al. (2009))

• Interstellar Dust Grains (Draine (2003))

• Theory of Star Formation (McKee and Ostriker (2007))

• Evolution of Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars (Herwig (2005))

• Thermonuclear Reaction Rates (Fowler, Caughlan, & Zimmerman (1967))

• Cool White Dwarfs (Hansen & Liebert (2003))

• Tests of Evolutionary Sequences using Color-Magnitude Diagrams of Globular Clusters (Renzini & Fusi Pecci (1988))

Other Useful links

• An awesome list of resources for professional astronomers: awesome-astronomy

• Astrobetter: Tips and Tricks for Professional Astronomers

• Astrobites: astro-ph reader’s digest

• Arxiv:astro-ph preprint server

• Astronomy Research Tutorial from Katherine Whitaker (UMass Amherst)

• Astropy: general tools for astronomy using python

• Skyfield: tools for computing object positions in the sky

• Boyce-Astro Video Tutorials: video tutorials for many basic topics in astronomy

• AstroML: Machine Learning notebooks for astronomy

• Astro animations from Michael Zingale @ Stonybrook

Additional Suggested Reading

• Constraining Solar Abundances Using Helioseismology, Basu & Antia (2004)

• Line Formation in Solar Granulation, Aslpund et al. (2004)

• Solar Models: Current Epoch and Time Dependences, Neutrinos, and Helioseismological Properties, Bahcall, Pinsonneault, & Basu (2001)

• The Stability of Supermassive Stars, Fowler (1966)

• Dynamics of the Interplanetary Gas and Magnetic Fields, Parker (1958)

Shield:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.