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. The intergalactic medium, the Lyman-alpha forest and observations of high redshift 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

9. Gamma-ray bursts and gravitational waves

10. First image of a black hole

Python programming language

1. Python – an introduction

2. Python for astronomy & science ( article by Daniel Faes)

• 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 redshift z
• Script V: correction of emission lines of galaxy sample for MW dust extinction and intrinsic dust extinction. Then, best-fit linear relation between log ([OII]) vs log (H-alpha). Finally, star-formation rate estimate from [OII], H-beta and H-alpha
• Script VI: SFR vs. stellar mass in a sample of galaxies
• Script VII: calculating the chemical enrichment (metallicity) of a sample of galaxies and finding the linear correlation between the metallicity and the stellar mass
• Script VIII: it shows two plots in two different windows or in the same window

Extras

1. The course-notes (in Italian) taken by Antonello Venturino, who was among my students for the year 2018

2. List of on-line tools

3. How to give better talks

4. The Cosmic Microwave Background: a concise description