Syllabus
This class is a general education course in everything astronomy related to planets and our Sun. The course is split into three main sections. In the first section we'll go over some essentials of astronomy, such as a historical view of our understanding of the Solar System, what physics tells us about light that we'll be looking at from the sky, and how things move around in space. The next section is all the Sun and the formation of planetary systems. We'll then move on the planets in our Solar System, including non-planetary bodies like asteroids, comets and meteors. This course isn't too tough, but I will require a little bit of math here and there, this is a science class at university after all!
Details
This class will meet three times a week over a the Fall semester. We followed the textbook Astronomy 2e by Fraknoi. It's free!
A copy of the most recent course syllabus can be found here.
Class slides
PDFs of the most recently completd semester's lecture slides can be found in the ASTR4A folder at this url.
Part A1: Introduction
Part A2: Essential astronomy
Part A3: Physics
Part A4: The night's sky
Part A5: Light
Part B1: The Sun
Part B2: Formation of the Solar System
Part C1: Rocky Inner Planets
Part C2: Earth-like planets
Part C3: Gas Giant Planets
Part C4: Ice Giant Planets
Part C5: Minor Solar System Bodies