Astronomy is the oldest quantitative science, but the grandeur and surprises of the Cosmos have always captured the imagination of non-scientists as well. In the late twentieth century, the pace of discoveries in astronomy has rapidly accelerated with technologically advanced new telescopes to see in gamma-ray, X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, microwave, and radio-frequency light, and powerful computers to aid theoretical understanding.
In this course, we will explore current understanding of the Universe beyond the Earth. We start with some fundamentals, describing important unifying physical processes in astronomy, and the tools astronomers use to explore the far reaches of spaces. We then make a great journey into the Universe beyond the Earth. Our tour begins in our near neighborhood (with the Moon, Sun, and planets), continues to our home Galaxy (with its stars and gaseous nebulae), and expands outward to include the distant galaxies and pervasive cosmic background radiation left by the Big Bang. From a qualitative point of view, we will describe theories for the physical processes governing the birth, life, and death of stars and planets, the structure of galaxies, and the nature of cosmic exotica including white dwarfs, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, and quasars.
The course is intended for non-science majors and assumes high-school-level algebra but no further preparation.