Astronomy 200 Final Study Guide

Topic Four: Gravity, Light and Matter

Things to know:

• the inverse square nature of gravity
• orbits - how they work including concepts of circular and escape velocity
• tides
• Einstein's ideas on light, matter and energy
• Einstein's idea of gravity as bending of space
• telescopes (all diff rent kinds)
• the electromagnetic spectrum and how concepts of photon, wavelength, frequency and energy are related
• how atoms emit and absorb energy
• bright line, absorption and continuous spectra

Topic Five : Atoms, Spectra and Stellar Classification

• the blackbody spectrum
• understand what continuous, brightline and absorption line spectra are and how to use them
• know how to use Wien's and Stefan's Laws
• know what colour-indices are and how they tell us temperature
• how spectral lines tell us about temperature, density, composition and motion
• what the Doppler Effect is and how to use the Doppler Shift formula
• the spectral classification sequence and how to identify spectral types by major features in the spectrum

Topic Six : The Sun

• be able to identify the major parts of the sun
• explain sunspots, flares, coronal mass ejections, spicules etc
• understand what the solar cycle is
• know what the Babcock cycle refers to
• understand why aurora happen and how they are related to the sunspot cycle
• understand how the sun generates energy via fusion of hydrogen to helium

Topic Seven : The Stars

• know how to use parallax
• distinguish between apparent and absolute magnitudes
• explain how star sizes can be estimated from spectral type and absolute and apparent magnitude
• explain what the HR diagram is and how it tells us about the birth and evolution of stars
• describe how stars form

Topic Eight : Stellar Evolution

• how stars generate energy via pp and CNO cycles
• how stars change as they age
• how a star's "age" shows up on the HR diagram
• the evolution and death of low mass stars (similar to Sol)
• the evolution and death of high mass stars
• the role of mass in determining the fate of a star
• how stellar mass determines absolute magnitude and main sequence lifetime
• neutron stars
• black holes