A1Y Introduction to Cosmology Course

Astronomy 1Y
Introduction to Cosmology
Dr G. Woan
Room 312, Kelvin Building.
Starts Wednesday 28 January 2004

Cosmology is the study of the whole Universe: its origins, evolution and eventual fate. It is mostly concerned with the 'big picture', and sacrifices a lot of the fine detail. We will see that the so-called 'Big-Bang' model of the Universe, although based on a number of greatly simplifying assumptions, is nevertheless remarkably successful in describing the overall nature of the Universe from its earliest moments after the Big Bang until the present day.

This is an introductory course, and will be forced to simplify further our discussion of cosmological observations and theories -- deferring a more complete study until the cosmology and general relativity modules in Honours astronomy. Nevertheless, the great success of the Big Bang model should become clear by the end of these lectures.

You will need a password for full access to the following material outside the University.
Requests should be emailed here

Course details

Copies of lecture notes will appear here as the course proceeds. Note that additional material will be provided in the lectures themselves.

Galaxies and their properties Structure of the Milky Way galaxy; rotation curves and dark matter; classification of normal galaxies; active galaxies and quasars (2 lectures)	pictures galaxy merger movie	handout I (pdf) full text (pdf)
Large scale structure of the Universe Measuring cosmological distances and redshifts; mapping the Local Group and Local Supercluster; distribution of clusters and superclusters (2 lectures)	pictures 2dF movie	handout II (pdf) full text (pdf)
The expanding Universe The Hubble expansion; isotropy and homogeneity: the Cosmological Principle; cosmological models: open, closed and flat; weighing the Universe: further evidence for dark matter (4 lectures)	pictures	handout III (pdf) full text (pdf)
The Early Universe Radiation and matter-dominated eras; the cosmic microwave background radiation; from the CMBR to galaxy formation (2 lectures)	pictures	handout IV (pdf) full text (PDF)

Other handouts

Annular parallax and absolute magnitude

Extra copies of all the handouts are available from the astronomy secretary's office (room 608) as they appear in the course.

Question Sheets
Problems for this course can be found in the A1 problems handbook. See the A1 Astronomy Home Page.

Books
There is no single textbook which is an essential purchase for this module. However An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, B W Carroll and D A Ostlie, Addison Wesley is strongly recommended, and is essential for the Astronomy 2 course It has its own website here. Its approach is in places more advanced than required for A1X and Y, however there is much useful material in it.

Some Interesting WWW Links relating to Cosmology

Click here to link to the homepage of the Hubble Space Telescope
Click here to link to the website of the World's Largest Optical Telescopes
Click here to link to the ESO Very Large Telescope homepage
Click here to link to the homepage of the HST Key Project to measure the expansion rate of the Universe (i.e. the Hubble constant)
Click here to link to the homepage of the Supernova Cosmology Project, to measure the curvature of the universe using very distant supernovae
Click here to link to the homepage of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which has recently measured very accurately temperature fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR)
Click here to link to Max Tegmark's CMBR data analysis centre, where temperature variations in the CMBR are studied as a probe of the cosmological model and of galaxy formation (very technical, but great animations and movies)
Click here to link to the homepage of the VIRGO Consortium, who are running very large computer simulations of galaxy formation.