FFYS4327 Galactic Dynamics
Spring Term 2001
NOTE WELL: The mid-term exam in this
course clashes with the mid-term exam for astrophysics II, so I propose
that since this course is only 2 o.v., we skip the mid term exam and only
have a final exam. Please let me know if this doesn't suit anyone! - Chris
Week 1
Introductory lecture
The steps from the Big Bang to the formation of galaxies,
galaxy types and morphologies. The Milky Way seen at many wavelengths, its
structure and components. Review of stellar proerties, mass, temperature,
luminosity, spectral type. Typical spectra and colours.
Module 2
Properties of stars and stellar distances. "Population
types" I and II and stellar ages. The Solar Neighbourhood. Space velocity
and orbits of stars. Open and globular clusters. Age of the Disk. Age-metallicity
and age-velocity relations. Dark Matter in brief.
Week 2
Module 3
Introduction to gravitational potentials. Rotation speed
of stellar systems.
Module 4
Potential-Density pairs. Plummer, Hernquist and Jaffe potentials.
Uniform sphere and isothermal sphere. Flattened potentials : the Miyamoto
and Nagai potential. A model for our own galaxy.
Week 3
Module 5
Orbits in a potential. Conservation laws. Bound and unbound
orbits. Spherical harmonic oscillator and the Kepler potential.
Module 6
Numerical integration of orbits. Equations of motion. Gnuplot
and BASIC programs.
Week 4
Module 7
Kinematics and space distribution of disk stars. Galactic
coordinates. Space distribution. The solar motion. Disk star orbits. Young
disk, old disk. Moving groups and stellar streams.
Module 8
The dynamics of stellar systems. Boltzmann Equation. Vertical
disk structure. Isothermal disk. The Jeans Equation.
Week 5
Module 9
Amount of matter in the disk. Solar Oscillation period.
Comets, the orbit of the Sun and the mass extinction of species. Disk dynamics
and spiral structure. Grand design spirals. Flocculant structure. Irregular
or peculiar spirals.
Week 6
Module 10
GAIA: The Galactic census project...
Week 7
Module 11
Galaxy encounters and mergers. N-body simulations. Merger
of two disk galaxies. Satellite mergers. Ring galaxies. Shells in galaxies.
Week 8
Module 12
Dark Matter. The Milky Way. Rotation curves of galaxies.
Hot gas in clusters of Galaxies. Dark matter in the early Universe. Structure
formation. Timing the local group. Gravitational lenses: In clusters. Microlensing.
Monitoring the MACHOS. Blame it on the little guys!
Week 9
Galaxy formation. Galaxy counts with magnitude and colour.
Faint blue galaxies. Space Telescope unveils the medium redshift galactic
Universe. Todays lecture was based on two articles, one by Richard Ellis
and the second by Malcolm Longair in Astronomy & Geophysics. Ask me
for a copy of the articles if you missed them in class.
Week 10
We look at the goings on at the Galactic center, and take a peek
at the evidence that there is a central black hole there.
The Galactic center
There are lots of links to follow at the end of the lecture
notes.
Week 11
To finish off the course, we took a look at the future of the Universe.
It all looks pretty bleak... we worked from an article in Sky and Telescope,
August 1998, by Adams and Laughlin.
Here is a brief summary of the article.
Barbera Ryden's lecture on the Future of the Universe.
The final table we looked at was from the last chapter,
on the future of the universe, in Barrow and Tipler's marvelous book, "The
anthropic cosmological principle".