Lecture Date |
Topic |
Reading |
Workshop |
Preliminaries: The scale of the Solar System and the Sun |
| Aug. 26 |
No class! |
|
No workshops this week! |
| Aug. 31 |
Inventory of the Solar System; a few facts about the Sun; blackbody radiation; nucleosynthesis |
Sec. 1.1, 1.3-1.4 |
|
The Moon and the four terrestrial planets: An introduction to the Solar System's rocky bodies |
| Sep. 2 |
Earth's moon: structure and composition; cratering; temperature |
Sec. 2.5.2, 3.4.2, 4.3, 4.6 |
Workshop 1 |
| Sep. 7 |
Moon rocks: minerals, isotope fractionation, and radioisotropic age dating |
|
|
| Sep. 9 |
Mercury: its structure, composition, and orbit; differentiated structures and the moment of inertia |
Sec. 2.5.3, 3.4.3 |
Workshop 2 |
| Sep. 14 |
Venus: volcanism, tectonics, and heating the interiors of terrestrial planets |
Sec. 2.1-2.2, 2.4-2.5, 3.4.4 |
|
| Sep. 16 |
Venus and Earth: atmospheric circulation, Hadley cells, the greenhouse effect, and life |
Ch. 5 |
Workshop 3 |
| Sep. 21 |
Earth and Mars: water, ice, and life; evidence of ancient Martian volcanism and tectonic activity |
Sec. 3.4.5 |
|
Celestial mechanics: Introduction, and the convenient example of the asteroids |
| Sep. 23 |
Newton's laws and orbital dynamics |
Sec. 7.2 |
Workshop 4 |
| Sept. 28 |
Perturbation of orbits and orbital resonances: dynamics of the asteroid belt and meteorites; transfer orbits; the restricted three-body problem and Lagrange points |
Sec. 7.3.0-7.3.1 |
|
| Sept. 30 |
Orbital perturbations and resonances (continued) |
|
Workshop 5 |
| Oct. 5 |
The composition and age of asteroids and meteorites |
Sec. 7.3.2-7.3.4, Ch. 9 |
|
| Oct. 7 |
Midterm #1, Practice Midterm #1 and Solutions |
|
No workshops this week! |
The giant planets |
| Oct. 12 |
No class - Fall break! |
|
|
| Oct. 14 |
Jupiter: its atmosphere and magnetic field |
Sec. 6.2-6.3 |
Workshop 6 |
| Oct. 19 |
Albedo, emissivity, and planetary surface temperature; heat conductivity, diffusion, and planetary interior temperature |
|
|
| Oct. 21 |
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; clouds and their formation, pressure in an isothermal atmosphere |
Sec. 6.4 |
Workshop 7 |
| Oct. 26 |
Convection, adiabatic processes in ideal gases, temperature structure of atmospheres, winds and storms, Jeans escape of light molecules |
|
|
| Oct. 28 |
Planetary rings: tides, the Roche limit, and the Hill sphere |
|
Workshop 8 |
| Nov. 2 |
Perturbations and resonances II: wave structure in rings, horseshoe orbits, ring shepharding, measurements of moments of inertia |
|
|
Smaller denizens of the outer Solar System |
| Nov. 4 |
The moons of Jupiter: orbital resonances, tidal heating, thermal evolution, life, and the timescale of giant planet formation |
Sec. 3.4.6 |
Workshop 9 |
| Nov. 9 |
The moons of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune |
Sec. 3.3.4, 3.4.7 |
|
| Nov. 11 |
Radiation forces, comet tails, and comets |
Sec. 7.5-7.6 |
Workshop 10 |
| Nov. 16 |
Pluto, Eris, and the Kuiper Belt; Sedna and the Oort Cloud |
Sec. 7.4 |
|
The formation and evolution of planetary systems |
| Nov. 18 |
Planet formation from disks around young stars |
Sec. 1.2, 2.3, 8.2.1-8.2.5 |
Workshop 11 |
| Nov. 23 |
Midterm #2, Practice Midterm #2 and Solutions |
|
|
| Nov. 25 |
No class! - Thanksgiving break |
|
No workshops this week! |
| Nov. 30 |
Planet formation (continued) |
Sec. 8.2.6-8.2.11 |
|
| Dec. 2 |
Exoplanets |
|
Workshop 12 |
| Dec. 7 |
Exoplanets (continued) |
|
No workshops this week! |
| Dec. 16 |
Final exam, Practice final exam and Solutions |
|
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