Astro 3: Solar System Astronomy

1. Astro 3: Solar System Astronomy *Rick Nolthenius Call me “Rick”. *Office: 706a 479-6506 *email: rinolthe@cabrillo.edu *visit my extremely excellent website!

2. Textbook – “The Cosmic Perspective – The Solar System” – Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, and Voit, 5th, 6th, or 7th Edition • The bookstore has the 7th, but you can find older and much cheaper editions on Amazon, etc. • We have several copies on reserve in the library

3. Grading • 6 mult. choice quizzes based on text. - ~10 questions each - closed notes • 3 video quizzes, after seeing ~50min video program. Take notes and use them for your mult. choice quiz, a dozen or two questions each • Final Exam: 50 mult. choice questions. You may have a single 8x10 sheet of paper crammed with all the notes you can muster! • Lowest score dropped. Will drop 2 quizzes but ONLY if both are no-show’s • Because…No make-ups • Extra Credit possibilities • Buy 10 green narrow scantron sheets from the book store. $3. Cheap! Keep them in your notebook along with a pencil.

4. What will we Do in Astro 3? • We start with my own “Chapter 0” on the principles of clear thinking and scientific method • Then the sky, how the rotating earth and orbiting earth make the sky show the patterns it does. • Seasons, eclipses very briefly in the planetarium, then some history. • Then to boldly go, on to the planets, comets, killer asteroids! • And Onward, to Oort Clouds comets wayy out there, and to other solar systems and to the question of Life in our Galaxy • I’ll stress the observational facts and how we use scientific inference to arrive at ideas, and to test them to home in on our current theories of the solar system. • Exams will stress getting a picture of processes and the ‘why’ behind what we see, not much on memorized factoids.