Course Outline:
This course is intended to give a general introduction to basic ideas and methods in optical and near infra-red astronomy. It will include instrumentation - various types of telescopes and the instruments that are used on them. Particular emphasis will be placed on the current and planned instrumentation at the Sutherland site of the SAAO, including the Southern African Large Telescope, because part of the course will be a field trip to the Sutherland site. The course will cover optical and infra-red photometry, optical spectroscopy and polarimetry and will introduce the student to analysis techniques and applications.
Syllabus:
- Basics
Co-ordinate systems, precession, nutation, parallax, aberration proper motion, atmospheric refraction and dispersion, time, the magnitude system, spectral classification. - Telescopes
Basic ideas, aberrations, configurations, mounts, domes and enclosures, mirror coating, active and adaptive optics, the Hartmann and Shack-Hartmann tests, deformable mirrors. - Detectors
Flux, quantum efficiency, the eye, the photographic plate, photomultipliers. - CCDs
Basic properties and operation, the three-phase CCD, noise sources, thinned and deep depletion CCDs, practical problems, bias, dark current, flat fielding, fringeing, modern CCD based astronomical instruments, future directions and developments. Practical demonstration (at SAAO). - SALT
The Southern African Large Telescope and its instrumentation, acquisition and science CCDs, spectrographs. - Satellites
Satellite construction, planning, instrumentation, orbits. - Photometry
Magnitude system, colour equation, zero point, filters and filter systems, atmospheric extinction, standard stars, "all sky" photometry, "differential" and "high speed" photometry, applications of photometry (calibration, interstellar reddening, cluster fitting), time series (Fourier) analysis and examples. - Variability
Types of variable star, naming convention, spectroscopic and eclipsing binaries, the binary pulsar, eruptive variables, radial and non-radial pulsation, driving mechanisms, the Baade-Wesselink method, types of pulsating stars (Cepheids, RR Lyrae, delta Scuti, gamma Doradus, white dwarf pulsators). - Polarimetry
Polarisation, Stokes parameters, observing methods and data analysis, new SAAO polarimeter, spectropolarimetry. - Infrared
Atmospheric transmission, blackbodies and temperature, dust and extinction, equipment, photometry, cameras, the IRSF telescope, the galactic centre, star formation, mass-loss, AGNs. - Spectroscopy
Dispersion, resolving power, objective-prism spectroscopy, diffraction gratings, slit spectrograph, echelle spectrograph, multi-object spectrographs, Fabry-Perot spectroscopy, integral field spectroscopy, applications of spectroscopy (radial velocities, binary stars, pulsating stars, redshifts, exoplanets).