Activities

Observational Activities.

These are carried out at the beginning of the course in February and March. A list of the observational activities we had to carry out in 2003 is:

• In and around Orion

• Limiting visual stellar magnitudes

• The sidereal and solar day

• The luminosity of the Sun

In TMA 02 a report must be written on one of a choice of two of these activities: the sidereal day vs the solar day, or the Sun's luminosity. Guidance is given as to the layout the report must take.

The fact that one must carry out these observational activities early on in the course, along with the reading of course books and the other activities (below) mean that this course is quite time-consuming in the early weeks, certainly up to TMA 02. After this, the workload decreases a little.

Important note: TMA 02 is worth 37.5 % of the assessed course work and is non-substitutable.

Activities.

These are contained in booklets sent out in the mailings. Most involve using spreadsheets. Star Office is provided on CD-ROM as the course's main spreadsheet software, but you can use Excel if you have it. A wide range of topics is covered. For the first half of the course the topics were:

• The Sun today

• The magnetic Sun

• Filaments and prominences

• Sunspot number

• Our Invisible Sun

• Stellar distance and motion

• Wien's law

• Spectral classification of stars

• Variable stars

• Jeans mass

• A delicate balancing act

• The age of the Jewel Box

• Investigating supernova remnants

• Observing the energetic Universe

These topics take between 30 mins to 2 hours to complete, usually there is one per week to do, except when a TMA is due.