ASTRONOMY 3: Introductory Astronomy: The Solar System

Winter 2012

Lecture 5: Properties of light and telescope


Properties of light: reflection, refraction, and color dispersion.

wave nature: polarization, diffraction and intensity

Dual nature of light: properties of waves: color, wavelength, and energy

Line radiation: atomic and molecular transition: photones and emission lines.

Doppler effect: measurement of radial velocity

continuum radiation

black body radiation: color and intensity

absorption and emission lines.

refracting and reflecting telescopes.

resolution, diffraction limit

seeing, adaptive optics, and interferometer

extracting information from color and magnitude

information extracted from spectrographs.

Windows in the Earth atmosphere

advantages of space telescopes in different wavelength range

human space exploration

robotic probes and remote sensing.