Course Overview and Rationale
This course is appropriate for natural science focused undergraduate students or for anyone with an interest in astronomy and astrophysics. This course will cover aspects of physics, chemistry, and astronomy. This course will study the entire life cycle of stars through a descriptive point of view. Students in the course will also study the classification system used to sort stars by type and how relevant parameters such as a star’s mass, surface temperature, radius, and evolutionary phase are determined. The cultural impact of stars, shaping mythology, and ritual will be examined in each unit.
Course Description
The very elements required for life have astrophysical origins. To understand the life cycle of the stars in some sense allows us to understand the origin of our planet and of ourselves. We begin our study with the intense study of our local star, the Sun. It will serve as the benchmark that we will compare all other stars to, learning how scientists take the star’s “vital signs” and classify them into types. We will examine the entire life cycle of a star from its birth in the vast complex clouds of the interstellar medium to its eventual end as an exotic stellar corpse. By tracking the stars evolutionary cycle, we then discover the origins of many of our naturally occurring elements. As a second focus, the mythology associated with the Sun and other stars will be examined in each unit.
Course Objectives
At the conclusion of the course, the student should have a workable understanding of:
- how scientists measure star’s physical data;
- the differences in evolution in different stellar types;
- the general condition under which stars form, evolve, and die; and
- and the societal impact that stars have made in some cultures.
