ASTR 404 - Astronomical and Astrophysical Measurements

This is a 3-credit 4th-year undergraduate-level course. Grad students can take this course as ASTR 503.

Official course webpage

Meetings (note different rooms on different days!):
Tuesdays 11:30-12:45, Hennings 301
Thursdays 11:30-12:45, Hennings 304
Office hours: Tuesdays 2:00 - 3:00 pm, or send me email at stairs@astro.ubc.ca

Current important messages:

Final Exam Friday Dec. 8th, 12 pm, Hennings 302.

If you still need Paul Hickson's notes, please contact me.

The solution to the pulsar problem is here.

Download data for Assignment 2, question 5 here.

Download data for Assignment 3, question 5 here, and the sample C program here.

Useful and interesting links, including a few telescopes planned or under construction:
GLAST - the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, specifically the LAT system
ALMA - the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillitre Array
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA; radio)
The Square Kilometre Array (radio)
The Thirty Metre Telescope (optical/IR)
James Webb Space Telescope (IR)
The Virtual Radio Interferometer
The Center for Adaptive Optics at UC Santa Cruz
Gemini telescope adaptive optics pretty pictures
GBT off-axis design
Public-level description of the Arecibo telescope including a ray diagram of the Gregorian dome.
Notes on telescopes and optics from a course at SUNY Stony Brook.
Wavefront maps, etc. illustrating aberrations -- link from Paul's notes.
Ray-tracing simulations of aberrations, etc.
The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics to COBE
Lots of detail on bolometers
The cesium fountain clock at NIST
The GPS system
Lots more detail on time systems
The International Celestial Reference Frame
Program and pdf lecture notes from the 4th International X-ray Astronomy School, organized by NASA and the CXO Center at Harvard-Smithsomnian. Very good resource for detector info and scientific overviews.

ADS and astro-ph abstract links for several useful review articles -- follow the links to access the full articles (html or pdf).

My homepage