PLANETARY ASTRONOMY

Catalog description

This course addresses the question of humanity's place in the universe. How did we go from a view of Earth as fixed and unmoving in the center of the universe to our modern perspective of the solar system and our first glimpses of planetary systems beyond? Beginning with the observational patterns of the night sky, this course is an exploration of the development of our modern understanding of the solar sytem, as well as an investigation of the methods for detecting worlds orbiting other stars. These topics illustrate the practice of science and its implications for our understanding of the universe. The course's laboratory component involves observations of the night sky with the university's telescopes. GER: Physical Science