Astronomy 406 | Fall 2013

Links: Galaxies and the Universe Online

Observations/Experiments

Online Data

The Stellar Hit Parade

• The (apparently) brightest 170 stars courtesy of Jim Kaler
• RECONS summary of the data on the 100 nearest stars and separate page with data on stars within 10 pc of us
  in case of slow connections, a local cache of the 100 nearest star data and the nearest 10 pc data

The Multiwavelength Milky Way

• optical view
  
• Tycho-2 results on the 2.5 million(!) brightest stars
  • survey info
  • Tycho-2 sky plot (in Galactic and equatorial coordinates), relevant for Problem Set 3
    in case of slow connections, a local cache of the sky plot
• near-IR: stars
• far-IR: dust
• CO molecules: tracers of molecular hydrogen (H₂); full-sky version
• 21-cm (all velocities) : atomic hydrogen (H I)
• H alpha: tracer of ionized hydrogen (H II)
  WHAM northern sky results plotted
  SHASSA southern sky results plotted
  all-sky summary

Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)

Some of these links are useful for the cosmology option of the computational project.

• Survey goals and methods
• Sky Server
• Navigate the digital sky!
• list of key spectral lines
• finding chart
• SDSS celestial equator pie-diagram from Q2 of PS 8; published as Figure 1 of Blanton et al (2003) The Astrophysical Journal 592, 819 (viewable from a campus computer) or publicly available as preprint astro-ph/0210215

Local Talks

Several talks this semester may be of particular interest for A406 students. These are part of the rich variety of talk series which are a weekly feature of the astrophysics activity at Illinois:

• Astronomy Colloquium, 4pm Tuesdays, 134 Astronomy
• Center for Theoretical Astrophysics and General Relativity lunchtime Seminar, noon Wednesdays, 358 Loomis
• Physics Colloquium, 4pm Thursdays,141 Loomis

Prized Astrophysicists

• Albert Einstein
• Hans Bethe
• Martin Ryle
• Anthony Hewish
• Arno Penzias
• Robert Wilson
• S. Chandrasekhar
• Willy Fowler
• Russell A. Hulse
• Joseph H. Taylor, Jr.
• Raymond Davis, Jr.
• Masatoshi Koshiba
• Roberto Giacconi
• Vitaly Ginzburg
• John Mather
• George Smoot
• Adam Riess
• Brian Schmidt
• Saul Perlmutter