Astronomy 103
Labs To Do This Semester
Which lab we do a given nght will depend on where we are meeting. If the weather is good enough, we will meet at the 25th St. Garage observing facility and do the next facility lab. If it's not, we will meet in the Stevenson Center Computer Classroom and do the next classroom lab.
Be sure to check the Lab Status on the Course Page the day of your lab After 8:00 PM to find out which lab we are doing.
Print out, read, and bring with you the lab we will be doing. If an hour's notice isn't enough, then print out all of the labs that you might be doing on a given night, so that you will be ready. We will not have extra copies of the labs for you in lab, so you will be in trouble if you don't print out the lab you need ahead of time.
Semester-Long Labs:
These labs require data taken over the course of the semester. For planet orbit labs, you will make an observation every time you meet in the observing facility. Once you have learned how to do this, each observation won't take more than 10 or 15 minutes.
You will need to do the sunset lab on your own time– as you must make the observations at sunset, which will be (for most of the semester) before the beginning of lab. You will need to make an observation once each week. Again, after the first week when you have done the preparatory work, it won't take more than 10 or so minutes to make each of these observations.
At the end of the semester, after you have all of your observations, you will need to do some analysis and write-up of thes two labs as homework. These are the only labs that you won't be completing entirely during the lab meetings.
Facility Labs:
- Telescope Basics
- Constellations & Bright Stars
- Daily Rotation of the Sky
- Stellar Observations
- Observing Double Stars
- Lunar Observations [1]
- Moon Craters [1]
Notes
[1] The moon is not available every week. We will only do these labs in weeks when the moon is available. Your TAs will tell you if the moon lab may be done the next week, and the announcements on the Course Page will tell you if you will be doing a moon lab that night in lab.
Classroom Labs
- Telescope Field of View [1]
- Galaxy Classification
- Properties of the Sun
- Spectroscopic Binaries
- Investigating the Crab Nebula
- Dark Matter
- Phases of the Moon
[1] This lab requires data from the telescope basics lab, and as such will not be done until after your section has completed that lab.
Advanced, Extra-Credit Labs
The following labs are quite a bit more challenging than the other labs, and will not normally be assigned. However, if you complete all of the other labs before the end of the semester, and if it's clear at the end of the semester, you can also attempt these labs in order to get extra credit for your lab grade.