The program

Introduction

1. Telescopes, detectors, resolution, atmospheric distortion, adaptive optics

2. Wavelength/frequency/energy spectrum. Galactic and celestial coordinates. Vega and AB magnitude systems, flux and luminosity definition. Luminosity distance vs. redshift. The Sloan Sky Digital Survey. Different sets of filters and atmospheric absorption. Best sites for modern telescopes and sky observations.

3. Radio observatories, interferometry, high-energy telescopes, Cherenkov telescope. Galaxy morphology and galaxy populations. Angular size vs. redshift. Spectral Energy Distribution (SED). Dust: reddening and extinction, grain size distribution, dust extinction law and attenuation law, Galactic extinction correction.

4. Star-forming regions in galaxies, galaxy spectra, measuring redshift with spectra, interference of atmospheric absorption, sky emission and cosmic rays on galaxy spectra, dust extinction correction in galaxies, estimating the star formation rate in galaxies, photometric redshift, estimating the stellar mass of galaxies.

5. Parco Astronomico Lilio (near Croton, Italy)

6. Exoplanets

7. The Cosmic Microwave Background

8. Cosmic chemical evolution, primordial nucleosynthesis, solar chemical abundances, nucleosynthesis in massive stars, cosmic cycling of matter, measuring chemical enrichment in galaxies with emission lines, mass-metallicity relation, different methods used to estimate metallicity

9. The intergalactic medium, quasar spectra, the Lyman-alpha forest, high-redshift galaxies, gamma-ray bursts, chemical enrichment of the universe with absorption lines

10. Gamma-ray bursts and gravitational waves

Extras

1. Python – an introduction

• Script I: fitting an emission line with a gaussian profile, showing the line and calculating the flux
• Script II: chi^2 minimisation with 2nd degree polynomium
  
• Script III: calculating dust extinction for emission lines in galaxies at redshift z > 0
• Script IV: luminosity distance calculated for a sample with redshit z
• Script V: correction for dust extinction in the Milky Way and intrinsic, then calculation of the star formation rate
• Script VI: calculating the chemical enrichment (metallicity) of a sample of galaxies and finding the linear correlation between the metallicity and the stellar mass

2. How to give better talks

3. The Cosmic Microwave Background: a concise description