An Upper-Division Astronomy Laboratory Course for Undergraduate Physics Majors

Details An Upper-Division Astronomy Laboratory Course for Undergraduate Physics Majors An Upper-Division Astronomy Laboratory Course for Undergraduate Physics Majors

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...209.7105k&link_type=abstract

2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #71.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, V

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

While the Pittsburg State University Physics Department has taught general education astronomy lectures and labs as well as an astrophysics lecture course for upper-division physics majors for years, the department has not offered an astronomy laboratory course for advanced physics undergraduates. In spring 2006, such a lab course was implemented and centered on the availability of the department’s research-grade observatory and associated equipment.
The course was divided into three sections: Asteroid Astrometry, Cluster Photometry, and Stellar Spectroscopy. Approximately five weeks were spent on each project beginning with data collection at the 0.6-m telescope, data reduction/modeling, and a report written as a scientific paper. The course was useful to the students in that it sparked further interest and increased their depth of understanding of the covered topics. They also discovered some of the difficulties of observational astronomy, which can sometimes provide a more challenging research environment than the typical upper-division physics laboratory. Three of the students plan to go to astronomy graduate school and one is pursuing further research in molecular spectroscopy.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

An Upper-Division Astronomy Laboratory Course for Undergraduate Physics Majors does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with An Upper-Division Astronomy Laboratory Course for Undergraduate Physics Majors, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and An Upper-Division Astronomy Laboratory Course for Undergraduate Physics Majors will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1157666