Class Information

• Course Description
• Lecture Schedule
• Discussion/Lab Schedule
• Assignments. Check here for up to date information on Homeworks and Exams!
• What's my Grade Right Now?
• ASTR101 Blog. Talk to other students about astronomy! Help each other on homework problems!
• AstroClick! Bring your web enabled devices to class ...
• Other ASTR Courses, the Astronomy Minor, and the Planetary Science Minor.
• Mid Semester Evaluation! Still Open for Viewing.
• Mid Semester Lab Evaluation! Still Open for Viewing.
• CourseEvalUM Now Open! (Until Dec. 13).

Useful Links

• The Astronomy Workshop: A set of interactive computer programs for use in ASTR101.
  • Astronomy Classroom: Practice scientific notation and working with equations. Learn about astronomical distances and sizes.
  • Solar System Viewers: Watch the planets, moons, and comets move along their actual orbits.
  • Explore the Possibilities: What if an asteroid hit the Earth? What if a Rogue Star passed through our Solar System?
  • Solar System Calculators: Do the math fast!

• Class Action. Peer instruction questions for Astronomy.
• Supplementary Information for UMD Introductory Astronomy. This site includes useful practice automatically graded multiple choice questions!
• Astronomy Picture of the Day This site is updated daily and has a nice archive of pretty astronomy images.
• Homer Simpson in evolution: Where did Homer come from?
• Homer Simpson in epicycles: Why simple theories are preferred to complicated ones.
• What's up in the sky? Follow the observing link at Sky & Telescope and/or check out Astronomy Magazine.
• Computerized version of Powers of Ten
• Galileo's leaning tower of Pisa experiment - on the Moon! Apollo 15
• JavaLab for the curious. Collide or cannibalize your own galaxies, explore the expansion history of the cosmos, and more!
• An Atlas of The Universe See the Sun's place amongst the nearby stars, in the Milky Way Galaxy, and in the Universe.
• SETI The search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
  

• Welcome to the Planets Information about planets and spaceprobes from JPL.
• A Tour of the Solar System This page contains information about the planets, satellites, asteroids, comets, and Solar System related topics.
• Spacewatch This page contains information about this program which searches for near Earth objects.
• Build the Solar System to any scale you like, compared to any Google map.
• Current Mars Rover missions: Spirit & Opportunity.
• Current New Horizons mission to Pluto.
• Deep Impact: Maryland Astronomy's NASA mission to crash into a comet.
• Extra Solar Planets Astronomers have discovered planets around other stars. The list gets longer all the time!

• NASA's Imagine the Universe Follow links to the Astronomer's Toolbox for good info on the Electromagnetic Spectrum.
• The Stellar Spectral Sequence. The colors and spectra of stars.
• Sizes of Stars YouTube Video.
• HR Diagram YouTube Video.
• Pulsars Hear them tick!
• Videos of compact objects, including the expected appearance of things in the vicinity of black holes.

• Galaxy appearance and classification.
• Reinhard Genzel's movie of stars orbiting the two million solar mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
• Merging Galaxies - Josh Barnes's pedagogical sequence: initial conditions | merger | snapshot of merger in progress.
• Chris Mihos' Really Cool Merger Simulation which appeared in the IMAX film Cosmic Voyage (24 M).
• Hubble Space Telescope This page contains the latest pictures and scientific results from HST, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Go to Doug Hamilton's Home Page