Description
This course focuses on three particularly interesting areas of astronomy that are advancing very rapidly: Extra-Solar Planets, Black Holes, and Dark Energy. Particular attention is paid to current projects that promise to improve our understanding significantly over the next few years. The course explores not just what is known, but what is currently not known, and how astronomers are going about trying to find out.
Course Takeaways
- Learn what we know about extra solar planets and how we know it
- The history of discovery of deep space, where the research is going
- Study black holes, how they behave, what we know and what remains a mystery
- Cosmology, study of universe as a whole, specifically will study dark energy and dark matter, observations of dark energy via supernovae
Meet the Instructors
Charles Bailyn is the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of Astronomy and Physics and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Astronomy at Yale. He earned a B.S. in astronomy and physics from Yale in 1981 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard in 1987. His recent research efforts have focused on observations of binary star systems containing black holes and on stellar collisions in dense star clusters. He has lectured on “How To See a Black Hole” to school groups, Yale alumni, and amateur astronomical societies. He is the author of over 100 scientific papers, and his work was featured in the PBS mini-series, Mysteries of Deep Space.
Full biography
