This is a hands-on laboratory course with both indoor and outdoor experiments. Students learn how to handle an optical telescope and a radio telescope, a theodolite, a sextant and other related equipment. They measure the temperature of the Sun and several other bright stars, learn how to measure distances using parallax and how to infer the latitude and longitude of a location from the position of stars. Variable stars like Cepheids that are important distance indicators are studied. The experiments include the measurement of Doppler effect and the detection of rotation of our galaxy using the Doppler shift of the spectral line of hydrogen at the radio frequency of 1.4 Gigahertz.
Prerequisite: None
Level: 1000
