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Overview - Our Place in The Universe(s) (24 - 25)

This document provides an overview of an astronomy module, detailing its content, learning outcomes, and expectations for students. The course aims to give a broad, non-mathematical understanding of astronomy, covering topics from the Solar System to the Universe, and is designed for students from various disciplines with no prior knowledge required. Assessment includes an essay, presentation, and a multiple-choice exam, with an emphasis on student engagement and independent study.

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15 views6 pages

Overview - Our Place in The Universe(s) (24 - 25)

This document provides an overview of an astronomy module, detailing its content, learning outcomes, and expectations for students. The course aims to give a broad, non-mathematical understanding of astronomy, covering topics from the Solar System to the Universe, and is designed for students from various disciplines with no prior knowledge required. Assessment includes an essay, presentation, and a multiple-choice exam, with an emphasis on student engagement and independent study.

Uploaded by

fuka.sugure.8t
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Overview

This page contains the following:


Module overview
Who attends the module?
Learning outcomes & syllabus
Expected level of knowledge
Our expectations of students

Should you not pass the module, please see the (re)sits page (https://canvas.sussex.ac.uk/courses/31719/pages/resits-slash-sits)

Astronomy, the study of space and its contents beyond the Earth, is both the Brief video introduction to the course.
oldest science, and one in which new discoveries are being made on a daily
basis. It is used to explain such familiar phenomena as the tides, eclipses and
meteor showers, as well as much more exotic objects such as black holes and
exoplanets. The observable Universe also provides a laboratory for testing
physical theories at extreme energies that are unachievable on the Earth.
This course will provide students with a broad, non-mathematical
understanding of astronomy from our Solar System, via stars and galaxies, to
the Universe as a whole, all to appreciate Our Place in the Universe(s). 0:00 / 1:54

Note that lectures will differ slightly each year, due to new discoveries being
made (see the discoveries in science Wikipedia page
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_years_in_science#2000s) ) and improvements to the course, but ~90-95% of the course is expected to
remain unchanged from the previous year.
Full recordings of the lectures are available either from the Panopto Recordings tab
(https://canvas.sussex.ac.uk/courses/31719/external_tools/3491?wrap=1) in the left hand menu soon after a lecture finishes, or in the Module
Content list on the module front page (https://canvas.sussex.ac.uk/courses/31719/pages/our-place-in-the-universe-s) , where you can click on the
following two icons to either download a PDF of the lecture slides (left), or watch the lecture capture recording (right).

Students attend this course from a wide variety of subjects, including Anthropology, Biology, Business & Management, Criminology, Drama &
theatre, Ecology, Economics & finance, Education, English, Film-making, Geography, History, International development & relations,
Management, Media, Music, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, Social work, Sociology, Zoology and many other degree courses!
The module content and assessment recognises this diversity. No prior knowledge is assumed or required, the module is non-mathematical and
descriptive, and the final mark depends on an essay, presentation and multiple-choice exam. For this reason, motivated students do well on the
course no matter what their background.
Left: The results from 2021/2.
22% of students got a first for the module, and 26% a upper-second
class mark. High marks are achieved by being organised and
putting the hours in. Low marks are almost always due to non-
submission of work.

By the end of this module a successful student should be able to:

1. Briefly describe our current state of knowledge about the Universe and our place within it.
2. Differentiate between science and pseudo-science: demonstrate an understanding of the difference between astronomy and astrology.
3. Rank astronomical objects and phenomena by distance, age and energy scale.
4. Interpret basic observational phenomena using simple physical models.
5. Read, summarize and critique popular articles on astronomy..

In detail, students should have an overview of the following:


Understand how the ancients perceived the Universe, and why they were, in many cases, incorrect.
Understand how the perception of our place in the universe has changed (e.g. the scales involved).
Appreciate the Earth as just another planet.
Understand the Moon’s influence.
Appreciate the difference between the objects in our solar system, and their appearances: the Sun as a star; planets; Moons; asteroids;
dwarf planets & comets.
Appreciate how these objects appear from Earth.
Understand the basic mechanics of the solar system: orbits, retrograde motion, barycentre’s.
Understand that stars group in clusters (open clusters, globular clusters & galaxies) and the approximate sizes and numbers involved.
Appreciate how stars and planets form, how stars (both large and small) evolve, and over what time scales.
Appreciate the physical processes occurring inside stars.
Understand how planets are discovered orbiting stars, and how many planets we currently know of and their morphology (sizes, orbital
periods, etc).
Appreciate the conditions needed for life, and so where life may exist elsewhere in our solar system & galaxy.
Know how the Sun has, and will, evolve; and how stars unlike the Sun evolve.
Appreciate the role of nuclear fusion in stars, and how heavier elements are made.
Understand how extreme stars (white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes) form.
Appreciate the logic behind the need for dark energy and dark matter - Memorise the different types of galaxies (including active galaxies).
Have a basic understanding of how the universe formed, and the observational support for our current understanding.
Appreciate the role of spectroscopy in astronomy, and red & blue shift.
Broadly understand the limits of our current ground and space telescopes, and appreciate the need for multi-wavelength astronomy.
Be able to take astronomy photographs, using basic image processing techniques

No prior knowledge is expected for this module!


By the end of this module, we want you to have a good, general understanding of our Universe, and an appreciation of the methods used.
We have 22 x 1-hour lectures for this module, and the exam is only 30 minutes long, so the lectures all go into more far more detail than required
for the exam (which is true for all your modules!). So if you are looking at a certain slide thinking "Wow, this bit is tricky", then it probably is, and
so won't appear in the exam!
To reassure you, the end-of-module multiple choice exam is only worth 25% of the module grade, and consists of two questions taken from each
lecture. 40% of the questions are designed to be easy (I want everyone to get at least 40% in the exam!), and 20% of the questions are
designed to be tricky (to limit the number of students getting more than 80% in the exam).
For example, the magnitude system that we cover in lecture 3. We expect you to know:
What the magnitude system is used for (it tells us how bright things are in the night sky);
Which way the numbers go (that is - a magnitude 0 object is brighter than a magnitude 5 object).
A challenging level of knowledge would be to know:
Why the planets appear to vary in size and brightness (because the distance between us and the planets vary);
That the magnitude of the faintest objects we can see with the unaided eye is approximately magnitude 6.
You are not expected to remember specific numbers for specific objects, such as:
How bright Mars is;
How faint the Hubble Space telescope can see.
If more obscure/technical information is required for a question, that additional information will be given in the question. For example:
The planet Jupiter shines at magnitude -2, the star Aldebaran shines at magnitude +0.8, and the North Pole star Polaris shines at magnitude
+2. Which object is brightest?
The answer to that is found by remembering that objects with negative magnitudes are brighter that those with positive numbers, and so the
answer to that question is Jupiter... Although, I still regard that question to be a bit of a tricky question.

An approximate rule of thumb throughout the module is that you should remember one brief point per slide.

Note that an example multiple-choice test is available on the quizzes page (https://canvas.sussex.ac.uk/courses/31719/quizzes) .
Remember: You should consider your degree to be a full time job, and lecturers are there to guide you through the subject material. Each term
you will be studying on average four modules, and so it is expected that you will devote approximately 10 hours of work to each module per
week.
Students are expected to spend approximately 2 hours going through the material covered in each lecture soon after each lecture, to ensure that
they are comfortable with, and keeping up with, the large amount of material that we will cover during the course. This is the only way to ensure
that you are prepared for writing your essay, your presentation and for the exam.
We also expect that all work submitted by students is their own work - see the resources page for further details about academic
misconduct (https://canvas.sussex.ac.uk/courses/31719/pages/resources) .

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