Course Outline:

Week of Jan 14: Overview of galaxies and their structure. The Hubble sequence and how physical properties vary along it. Other classification schemes. Reading: text sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3.

Jan 14: Classifying galaxies

Jan 16: The Hubble sequence and how physical properties vary along it. Other classification schemes.

Jan 18: Galaxy formation: theoretical overview. Reading: Longair Ch 11, Mihos 328 notes.

Jan 21: MLK Holiday

Week of Jan 23: Distance scale. absolute and relative distance indicators. Main sequence fitting. Cepheids and Baade-Wesselink method.
Homework 1 due Jan 23.

Jan 25: More on galaxy formation. Cooling of gas

Jan 25: Distance scale. absolute and relative distance indicators. Main sequence fitting.

Week of Jan 28: Stellar populations in the Milky Way. Solar neighborhood contents, age distribution, stellar luminosity function. White dwarf LF.
Homework 2 due Feb 1.

Jan 28: Cepheids and Baade-Wesselink.

Review variable stars: Prof Mihos 222 notes

Jan 30: Stellar LF.

Feb 1: The IMF

Week of Feb 4: Mapping the Galaxy with star counts. Pros and cons of the technique. The Milky Way disk and bar. Spatial distribution (scale height and length).

How galaxies get angular momentum

Kravtsov simulations

Feb 4: Thin disk structure, age

Feb 6: White dwarf cooling, thick disk

Feb 8: Thick disk, bar/bulge, halo

Prof Mihos movie of disk going bar unstable

Week of Feb 11: Disk kinematics. Rotation. Epicycles, disk heating, spiral structure.
In class test 1 (Galaxy classification, galaxy formation, distance scale) Feb 11.

Feb 11: Stellar kinematics

Feb 13, 15: Disk kinematics. Heating and epicycles. Spiral structure.

Week of Feb 18: The thick disk. Age measurements. Origins

Homework 3 (Stellar LF and star count modeling of the Galaxy) due Feb 22.

Feb 20: Minor mergers and the thick disk

Feb 22: thick disk formation

Week of Feb 25: The Galactic halo. Globular clusters. Chemical evolution. Spatial distribution of halo, kinematics, star streams, origins.

Dynamical friction (Mihos javalab)

Dynamics of mergers(Mihos javalab)

Feb 25: Minor mergers and the Monoceros stream

Feb 27: Formation of the halo, substructure and streams

Phase space density and conservation from Prof Mark Whittle's webpage at University of Virginia

Feb 29: Finding streams using conserved quantities such as energy and angular momentum

Week of Mar 3: Finding substructure in the disk and thick disk. Measuring ages. M31's halo. The rest of the local group: dwarf galaxies. reionization, formation, star formation history.
Midterm 1 on March 5. Covers everything in notes up to Feb 29.

Mar 3: Finding substructure in the disk and thick disk. Measuring ages. M31's halo.

Mar 5: Midterm.

Mar 7: The Local Group; dwarf galaxies.

Mar 10-14: Spring Break

Week of Mar 17: Dark Matter

Week of Mar 24: Interstellar medium overview: phases, detection. Galaxy morphology and environment.

Mar 24: ISM

Mar 26: ISM detection

Mar 28: Galaxy morphology and environment. The Galaxy Luminosity Function.

Week of Mar 31: Elliptical galaxies: properties and surface photometry.

Mar 31: Elliptical galaxies: properties, trends

Presentation on Elliptical galaxies and Sauron by Tim de Zeeuw

April 2: Elliptical galaxies: boxy vs disky, fundamental plane.

April 4: The fundamental plane. Photometry of disk galaxies

Week of April 7: Structure of disk galaxies. What SAURON has taught us about bulges and ellipticals.

April 7: LSB disk galaxies. Types of galaxy bulges

April 9: Vertical structure of galaxy disks. SAURON summary: bulges and ellipticals.

April 11: Making ellipticals with mergers: with and without gas.

April 11: Lookback studies of galaxies: Lyman break galaxies

Week of April 14: High redshift galaxies

April 14: Searches with deep near-IR imaging

April 16: Local vs high-z galaxies, sub-mm searches

April 18: Measuring galaxy mass at high redshift

Week of April 21: AGN and their uses.

April 21: Active Galactic Nuclei

April 23: AGN density as f(redshift)

April 25: Black hole relations to galaxy properties; variations in fundamental quantities with redshift)

April 28 (last day of class): Midterm 2.