Course Outline:

(1) Review of Physical Cosmology

Jan 13:Cosmology

Jan 15: The Robertson-Walker metric and review of dynamics in an expanding universe.

(2) The Cosmological Distance Scale

Jan 22: Distance scale. Absolute methods: Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, water masers.

Jan 27: Distance scale. Gravitational lensing, Cepheid distance to Virgo.

Jan 29: Distance scale. Ways to measure H0. SBF distances.

Feb 3: PNLF, Dynamical distance indicators -- Tully-Fisher and Dn-sigma.

Feb 5: Supernovae type 1a

Feb 10: Distance scale debate: Purists vs Realists.

(3) Inventory of the High-Redshift Universe

Feb 12: In-class test. Review of galaxy properties.

Feb 17: Large-scale structure

Feb 19: Two-point correlation function

Feb 24: High-redshift galaxies and dark matter in clusters

(4) Physical Cosmology

Feb 26: Geometry only: redshift, time dilation and volume of curved space

Mar 3: Physical cosmology: adding dynamics

Mar 5: Luminosity-distance test.

Mar 10, 12: SPRING BREAK

Mar 17: Cosmological constant. More tests: standard candles and standard rods

Mar 19: Surface brightness. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis

Mar 24: Omega_baryon from BBN and from the Coma cluster

Mar 26: Cosmic Microwave Background

Mar 31: WMAP results

Apr 2: The topology of the universe

(6) Structure Formation post-Big Bang

Apr 7: Structure formation intro

Apr 9: Why simple pictures fail us

Apr 14: Structure formation in the presence of dark matter

Apr 16: Testing all these models

Apr 21: Evolution of the Lyman alpha forest, nature of Lyman break galaxies

Apr 23: Disk formation and evolution: what Bonnie will be doing on her summer holidays

Apr 28: Evolution in clusters: the Butcher-Oemler effect