Stars and galaxies

Stars and Galaxies are the most fundamental objects in astronomy. This unit will introduce you to the modern study of stars and galaxies, how we collect data and how computational tools work hand in hand with telescopes to advance our understanding. We will study the following topics: observing the stars; thermodynamics and equation of state; stellar composition; reduced equations of stellar structure; polytrophic stellar models; stellar energy sources and timescales; energy transport; full equations of stellar structure; evolution of the Sun; the main sequence; post-main-sequence evolution; stellar nucleosynthesis; red giants and supernovae; chemical evolution of the Galaxy; Galactic archaeology; Galactic morphology and stellar content; Galactic dynamics; orbits in spherical and axisymmetric potentials; potential theory; elliptical and spiral galaxies; large-scale structure of the Milky Way; dark matter; galactic distances; surface brightness of galaxies; collisions between galaxis; active galaxies.