The astronomy taught alongside the telescope building at the DSPIRA summer institute, recorded. These university lectures were given to high school teachers. They assume no astronomy background and retain university-level explanations.
They run in order and build on each other, but each stands on its own if you only want one.
- Astronomy Lecture 1
- Astronomy Lecture 2
- Astronomy Lecture 3
- Astronomy Lecture 4 — a planetarium session, not recorded
- Astronomy Lecture 5
- Astronomy Lecture 6
- Astronomy Lecture 7
The DSP lecture recordings are the other half of the institute, covering sampling, Fourier analysis and filters.
Who gave them
Dr. Loren Anderson, WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy. Topics include units, scales, sky motion, observation planning, time, gravity, dark matter, and rotation curves.
Dr. D. J. Pisano, then at WVU. Topics include light, telescopes, the Doppler effect, stars, and stellar evolution. Other lectures cover the Milky Way’s discovery, galaxies great and small, galaxy interactions, and dark matter.
The slides
All thirteen, in the order they were given.
Dr. Loren Anderson
- Units and Scales
- Motion of the Sky
- Time and Planning Observations
- Gravity
- Dark Matter
- Galactic Rotation Curves
Gravity, Dark Matter and Rotation Curves are the three that the Velocity Curve unit builds toward. Start there if you teach that unit and want more physics background than the student handouts provide.
Dr. D. J. Pisano
- Light and Telescopes
- Doppler Effect and Telescopes
- Stars
- Stellar Evolution
- Discovery of the Milky Way
- All Galaxies Great and Small
- Galaxy Interactions and Dark Matter
Figure credits
Some slides reproduce figures from published astronomy textbooks. Credits include © 2007 Thomson Higher Education and © 2005 Brooks/Cole – Thomson. Both publishers are now Cengage Learning. The lecturers obtained permission to reproduce these figures here. That permission does not cover their reuse elsewhere. Everything else on this site is under the repository’s own license.
Reading further
Two places worth knowing about, both free.
-
Essential Radio Astronomy — NRAO’s course. Clear, concise and complete, at a level a step above these lessons. The place to go when you want the derivation rather than the result.
-
Open Source Radio Telescopes provides collaborative telescope designs and methods for readers from middle school upward. Other people’s builds, and somewhere to put yours.
For the signal processing side, the GNU Radio wiki is the reference, with tutorials from beginner to advanced.
Additional institute slides
Download the 2018 astronomy PowerPoint decks. The teaching resources page also includes observation figures and a preparation checklist.