PH556 – ASTROPHYSICS

Instructor:

Prof. Varun Bhalerao

Course offered in:

2019-2020

Course Content:

The course aims to give an introduction to astrophysics. It covered topics like telescopes, working of detectors, gravitational waves, distance measurement techniques, coordinate systems, stellar classification, Gamma-Ray Bursts, X-Ray phenomena, spectral analysis of stars, basic cosmology, opacity, etc. In addition to theory, the course also involved a group course project of our choice, for which we were supposed to write observational proposals for GROWTH-India Telescope (Hanle) for getting the data. A session on how to use images from GROWTH was also held, which gave an introduction to image reduction and data analysis. Unfortunately, due to maintenance issues at Hanle and the COVID-19 pandemic, the projects had to be cancelled. Lighter tasks, like observing Venus over a period of time, trying to find out its orbital parameters, calculating the distance to the moon by parallax were floated, which were not graded, but contributed to a better understanding of the theory taught.

Prerequisites:

N/A, but a fair understanding of basic physics would help.

Feedback on Lectures:

The lectures were very interactive, with the professor constantly asking us questions and encouraging us to answer them on our own. The environment was on the informal side and often, discussions on current events in Astronomy (e.g. the dimming of Betelgeuse) were encouraged. Emphasis was placed on observational astronomy in the beginning of the course, which then went on to more theoretical stuff. There were guest lectures as well, by people with varied research interests.

Evaluation Method:

The weightage was as follows: 30% midsem, 30% project, 40% endsem. The midsem was on the easier side, with numericals and points for diagrams. It was graded fairly and partial points were given for correct approach. It was lengthy as it had some calculations which can easily go wrong.

Difficulty:

(on a scale of 1 being very easy to 5 being very hard): 3

Text Book:

Carroll & Ostlie, Astronomy OpenStax, a lot of different online resources

Grading Statistics:

The prof gave an S grade to all, as only the midsem was conducted.

Miscellaneous:

Overall, the course was quite well structured, with proper resources available. In addition to that, one of the students had to upload that day’s lecture notes on Moodle. The course gave a solid foundation for the various fields in astronomy and provided interaction with post-docs with different research interests. It also gave us a basic idea on how to write proposals for a project.

Review by – Pranav Page (pranavpage33@gmail.com)