This course is designed for students who wish to study modern astrophysics at a level beyond most popular books. It covers the formation and evolution of the solar system, extra-solar planets, the formation, evolution and death of stars, white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes, galaxies, cosmology, expanding space and the Big Bang. A feature of this course is guest lectures on cutting edge astrophysics by world famous researchers. Students wishing to specialise in astrophysics should take this course.

The topics covered in the course include: the formation of the solar system, planets beyond Pluto, planets around other stars, stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, star death: black holes, neutron stars and supernovae, galaxies: their puzzling properties, the expanding universe, introductory general relativity, the Big Bang, the early universe, microwave background and galaxy formation.

On satisfying the requirements of this course, students will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. describe and use the main time, length and mass scales in astronomy, and will be familiar with the main outstanding research problems in contemporary astrophysics
2. use Newton's laws to analyse motions in space, both analytically (for straight-line and circular motion) and numerically (for more complicated cases). These skills will be demonstrated in complex context rich scenarios
3. plot data (including error bars), interpret data presented in the form of such graphs, and fit models to noisy data using Chi-squared
4. write, from scratch, programs that solve simple numerical puzzles, and programs that read in data and fit models to that data
5. synthesize information related to astrophysics from a variety of sources and write it up as a properly planned, constructed and structured body of text, with correct grammar

Assessment will be based on:

• Written assignments (50%; LO 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, with particular emphasis on 1, 2, 5)
• Lab project work (50%; LO 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on 2, 3, 4)

PHYS1101 and mathematics to at least the standard of MATH1013.

PHYS1201 and maths at least to the standard of MATH1014.