Welcome!

Introductions

Preview

• The Big Picture: cartoon, professional logarithmic map
• The Milky Way
  • visible ingredients: stars, gas clouds bright, and dark, star clusters young and old
  • global, all-sky views across the spectrum:
    • optical view
    • near infrared view
      
    • near and far infrared view
    • gamma-ray view
  • zoom into the Galactic center:
    IR zoom
    stellar orbits around a supermassive black hole

• Galaxies
  • spirals and their origin
    bars and their origin
  • ellipticals
  • interactions
  • clusters
  • active galactic nuclei

• Cosmology
  • the Hubble Deep Field, Ultra Deep Field, and Extreme Deep Field,
  • The Big Bang
  • evidence for dark energy
  • particle dark matter and the early universe:
    evidence, candidates, direct searches
    the role of non-traditional telescopes like this (tunnel, CDF detector) and this (detector)
  • cosmic microwave background
  • big bang nucleosynthesis
  • formation of the first structures and the first stars

Business

Astronomy 401