ASTRONOMY 404

Astronomical and Astrophysical Measurements

Course Outline 1998-99

• Fundamentals of radiation
  1. physical quantities, units, photometric systems
  2. types and sources of radiation
  3. coherence
  4. quantum effects
• Detection of radiation
  1. linear system theory, sampling
  2. measurement, DQE, RQE
  3. coherent detection: radio
  4. single channel detectors: optical, IR, Xray
  5. multichannel detectors: CCDs and arrays
• Telescopes
  1. fundamentals, principles, types
  2. image formation, aberrations,
  3. modern telescopes and systems
• Imaging
  1. image characterization, OTF, MTF
  2. atmospheric turbulence and its effects
  3. diffraction effects
  4. adaptive optics
• Spectroscopy
  1. principals
  2. grating spectrographs
  3. interferometric systems: Fabry Perot, FTS
• Interferometry
  1. radio interferometers
  2. aperture synthesis
• Data analysis
  1. calibration and reduction of data
  2. photometry
  3. image processing