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AST80006 Galaxies & Their Place in the Universe
Course/s with Unit:
A unit of study in the Graduate Certificate of Science (Astronomy), Graduate Diploma of Science (Astronomy) and Master of Science (Astronomy). Credit Points:
12.5 Credit Points Duration:
One semester Contact Hours:
Equivalent to 60 hours Campus:
Off-campus Prerequisites:
Nil. Corequisites:
Nil. Preclusions:
Students who have successfully completed (the old) HET604 cannot enroll in this unit. Learning and Teaching Structure:
Online delivery mode, contact via newsgroups & email. Assessment:
Assessable newsgroup contributions (30%), essay (50%) and online tests (20%). Aims:
This Unit aims to provide an introduction to galaxies and galaxy clustering, theories of dark matter, galaxy formation and evolution. Objectives:
After successfully completing this Unit, students should be able to:
- appreciate the “big questions” in galactic and extragalactic astronomy, and the current state of our knowledge on these questions;
- understand the concepts of galaxy formation and evolution;
- understand the way galaxies are classified and the approaches used to discover their properties;
- communicate basic principles and concepts about our and other galaxies, their properties and their constituents in a non-technical way understandable to the wider public;
- research an astronomy topic in depth, using dependable sources of astronomical information on the internet and refereed journal articles.
- The Milky Way: structure, rotation curves and dark matter, spiral arms & density wave theory, galactic centre, modelling the origin of the Milky Way
- The structure and classification of normal galaxies: spiral, elliptical & irregular galaxies, Hubble's classification
- Estimating galactic distances: standard candles, sizes and masses, redshifts & Hubble's Law
- Galactic structures: the Local Group, dwarf galaxies, dark matter in clusters, superclusters & voids
- Star formation: measuring rates and evolution, techniques and relationships
- Quasars and active galaxies: host galaxies, radio and Seyfert galaxies, unified active galactic nuclei model, black holes, gravitational lensing
- Interacting galaxies, galactic cannibalism & mergers, starburst galaxies, modelling galaxy interactions
- Galaxy formation and evolution, fluctuations and galaxy seeds, Jeans mass, N-body simulations, Cold Dark Matter
- The first stars and galaxies: the dark ages, Population III stars, galaxies and quasars at high redshift, the evolution of clusters, faint blue galaxies
- Quasar absorbers, evolution of gas in the Universe, the intergalactic medium.
For information about the textbook, follow this link.
