#	Date	Topics	Reading	Homework due
1	Th Aug 30	your place in the universe (the center!); a few words about ancient cosmologies; the nature of science; also familiarize yourself with the syllabus and do Participation #1	Ch. 1	Participation #1
2	Tu Sep 4	some basic astronomy history; distances, angles and all that: a new perspective?	Ch. 2
3	Th Sep 6	more history; the cosmological principle; parallax;	Ch. 2
4	Tu Sep 11*	fiat lux; Doppler shift becomes red (and blue) shift;	Ch. 3
5	Th Sep 13	more Doppler; spectra; heat & light; blackbody radiation; astrometry	Ch. 3
6	Tu Sep 18	"slippage day"† the distance ladder; the scale game; peculiar velocities; proper (transverse) motion	Chs. 1-3
7	Th Sep 20	Kepler and Newton return	Ch. 4	HW #1
8	Tu Sep 25	Newton continued; binding energy; escape velocity; if gravity is so weak, why is it so important in cosmology? proper motion	Ch. 4
9	Th Sep 27	TEST 1 on Chs. 1-3: bring pen/pencil and brain (no calculator; no texts; no cheat sheets, etc)
10	Tu Oct 2	escape velocity; circular velocity; Olbers' paradox; is gravity a real force? inertial frames of reference (and non-inertial ones) galaxy morphology	Ch. 4
11	Th Oct 4	galaxy construction: spirals, ellipticals and all that; disks and haloes (one kind of halo); differential rotation and density waves; rotation curves and the need for dark matter	Ch. 4
12	Tu Oct 9	galaxy clusters and the need for dark matter; WIMPs, MACHOs and MOND	Ch. 4
13	Th Oct 11	redshift revisited; cosmic web structure revisited; cosmic microwave background; "Hydrogen, Helium and everything else=metals"	Ch. 5
14	Tu Oct 16	More about the CMB	Ch. 5
15	Th Oct 18	Mass tells spacetime how to warp and spacetime tells mass how to move!	Ch. 6
16	Tu Oct 23	Special relativity - time dilation	Ch. 6	HW #2
17	Th Oct 25	Special relativity - length contraction	Ch. 6
18	Tu Oct 30	Hurricane Sandy!
19	Th Nov 1	TEST 2 on Chs. 4,5 and 6.1-4: bring pen/pencil and brain (no calculator; no texts; no cheat sheets, etc)
20	Tu Nov 6‡	General relativity; warping space and time...	Ch. 6
21	Th Nov 8	black holes and quasars; Schwarzschild radius; Einstein's GR equations	Ch. 6
22	Tu Nov 13	more about black holes; Friedmann equation (getting expansion right!), dark energy	Chs. 6-7	HW #3
23	Th Nov 15	Friedmann equation: who's dominant when?	Ch. 7	HW #3
24	Tu Nov 20	TEST 3 on Chs. 6.4-5,some of 7: bring pen/pencil and brain (no calculator; no texts; no cheat sheets, etc)
--	Th Nov 22	Happy Thanksgiving!
25	Tu Nov 27	photons, atoms and the CMB revisited	Ch. 8
26	Th Nov 29	The whole shebang, and the earliest few minutes...	Ch. 10
27	Tu Dec 4	density is destiny	Ch. 11
28	Th Dec 6	geodesics and curvature revisited	Ch. 11	HW #4
29	Tu Dec 11	Putting it all together	Ch. 11-12
--	Mon Dec 17	FINAL EXAM 10:30 am - 12:30 pm in our usual lecture room CSS 2400 (to be confirmed) on Chs. 1-11