Below is a list of topics, organized in roughly the order they appeared in the course. Note that Hour Exam 1 covered the material in Part I, and Hour Exam 2 covered the material in Part II. The Final Exam will be cumulative, and thus may include any of the material below. Note however that (1) the final exam will emphasize material from Part III, and (2) the Final Exam will be slightly longer than twice one of the Hour Exams, and thus cannot cover all of the material below.
| night sky | celestial sphere | phases of moon |
| eclipses | Ptolemaic vs Copernican systems | Kepler's Laws |
| Newton's Laws | angular momentum | atoms |
| atoms | light and photons | spectra | solar system properties: giant vs terrestrial planets | temperature | atmospheres |
| tides | craters and dating | greenhouse effect |
| planets | debris | origin of solar system |
| extrasolar planets |
| the Sun | hydrostatic equilibrium | nuclear reactions, solar neutrinos |
| star properties: distance, temperature, luminosity, mass, age (how measured?) | ||
| fate of 1 Msol star | fate of >10 Msol star | white dwarfs |
| neutron stars | supernovae | nucleosynthesis |
| general relativity | black holes | the Galaxy |
| dark matter | galaxies | the large-scale structure of the universe |
| the big bang | Hubble's law and its meaning | cosmic acceleration and dark energy |
| age of Universe | expansion law: Friedmann equation | microwave background |
| big bang nucleosynthesis | very early universe | inner space/outer space connections |