ASP3012: Stars

STARS: The first half of ASP3012

Interview with JL on stars and nucleosynthesis ( Part 1 and Part 2 ) at Brains Matter.com

Aims and Objectives

This unit will introduce students to the area of stellar structure and evolution, one of the most successful areas of astrophysical research. We will also be covering an introduction to stellar nucleosynthesis and the chemical evolution of the Galaxy.

By the completion of the unit the students should have an appreciation of the physics which controls a star's evolution and dictates its structure. They will also have learned the basic phases of a star's life, and thus have an understanding of where our Sun fits into the modern picture of the evolution of the Universe. Particular emphasis will be placed on the nuclear reactions which occur in stars, and the chemical evolution of stellar systems and the Galaxy.

NEWS

Vacation Scholarships! These are schoarships for your to undertake some research work at various institutions over the summer break. Most astronomical institutions in Australia offer some scholarships. Some further info is on the Blackboard pages.
Note that Monash offers its own Vacation Scholarships in astro through the Monash Centre for Astrophysics MoCA and a list is here.

Unit Structure and Support

The ASP3012 Unit Guide is on MUSO.

Each week there will be

three lectures
- Mon 3 S14
- Tue 12 S14
- Wed 1 S14
three computer laboratory classes. For these you will be given specifc exercises to complete. These are assessed.
- Mon 12-2pm Blg 19 G12
- Wed 4-6pm Blg 19 G12
- Thu 12-2pm Blg 19 G12
three theory support classes. These are to help with problem sheets and to explain concepts from the lectures.
- Mon 4pm Bldg 11 Room E363
- Tue 11am Bldg 11 Room E361
- Fri 12pm Bldg 11 Room E357
Your tutor is Stuart Heap
For those who want to use linux or fortran, there are some good resources online. You are not forced to learn fortran or linux, but I include these resources in case they are helfpul for those who want to use fortran or linux.
- a Fortran Primer is available in postscript or pdf formats.
- Information about the PGPLOT graphics package is here in post-script and pdf formats.

Week	Day	Date	Topic	Lecturer
7	Mon	Sep 5	Intro & Timescales	John Lattanzio
	Tue	Sep 6	Thermodynamics	John Lattanzio
	Wed	Sep 7	Equations of Stellar Structure and Polytropes I	John Lattanzio
8	Mon	Sep 12	Polytropes II	John Lattanzio
	Tue	Sep 13	Equations of Stellar Structure	John Lattanzio
	Wed	Sep 14	Convection	John Lattanzio
9	Mon	Sep 19	Nuclear Physics and Proton-Proton Chains	John Lattanzio
	Tue	Sep 20	CNO Cycles	John Lattanzio
	Wed	Sep 21	Stellar Evolution I: The Main Sequence	John Lattanzio
Break	Mon	Sep 26	Semester Break
	Tue	Sep 27	Semester Break
	Wed	Sep 28	Semester Break
10	Mon	Oct 3	Stellar Evolution II: Red Giants	John Lattanzio
	Tue	Oct 4	Nucleosynthesis I: Charged Particle Reactions	John Lattanzio
	Wed	Oct 5	Nucleosynthesis II: Neutron Capture	Maria Lugaro
11	Mon	Oct 10	Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars	John Lattanzio
	Tue	Oct 11	Abundances in Stars and Grains	Maria Lugaro
	Wed	Oct 12	Galactic Chemical Evolution	John Lattanzio
12	Mon	Oct 17	Cosmochronology and EMPH stars	John Lattanzio
	Tue	Oct 18	Abundances in Globular Cluster Stars	John Lattanzio
	Wed	Oct 19	Stellar Advances with Supercomputers	John Lattanzio
13	Mon	Oct 13	Revision: Stars	John Lattanzio
	Tue	Oct 14	Revision
	Wed	Oct 15	Revision

Assessment

Assessment for the unit will be the following

One assignment in the Stars part, counting 10%
One assignment in the Galaxies part, counting 10%
One observing report counting 10%
Computing Labs 10%
One exam counting 60%

Observing Report

I have prepared some notes on scientific writing to help with some of the common errors I saw in the drafts.

Computer Labs

The labs are to be handed in not necessarily at the end of the lab session. This is to allow you some extra time to work on them in your own time, once you have had help from the tutor.

Here are the codes needed for the labs. These are stored in a gzipped tarfile (.tgz).

Your tutor will help you with these - or read the instructions here.

There are some basic linux notes here.

Lab 1 on solving DEs numerically
Lab 1 exercises (included in the tgz file but here in case you just want this file)
Some excellent notes on numerical solution of DEs are included here.

Lab 2 on polytropic stars
Lab 2 exercises (included in the tgz file but here in case you just want this file)

Lab 3 on H burning
Lab 3 exercises (included in the tgz file but here in case you just want this file)

Lab 4 exercises on Stellar Evolution
These use the Windows to the Stars program.
The user manual is here.

Handouts for 2011

Basic Unit Guide

Assignment 2 is here

Here is a Fortran code for a basic RK4 integrator. And here is one for 2nd order DEs.
If you want to start with the Euler method (at least for reference, perhaps) then an Euler code for a first order DE is here and for a second order DE the Euler code is here.
For good notes on the theory of solving multiple DEs with RK4 see my brilliant notes here. You will need to change this, but it should give you the basics. You can use MATLAB or Fortran or anything you are comfortable with...

Sheet 1 is here

Some of these exercises involve plotting data (the data links are below). You can do this using any routines you like (even excel, in an emergency...) but it would be good to get used to the free linux plotting routine gnuplot. Indeed I have added a "#" to the data files where the names of the variables are given, as this indicates to gnuplot that this line is not data and it should be ignored. Please ask your tutor about gnupot, It is very powerful and easy to use!
- Data for Question 4 here.
- Data for Question 5 here.
- Data for Question 6 here.
- Program for Question 3 (in Fortran) ishere.
- Data for Question 4 here.
- Data for Question 5 here.
- And as a special treat.... here are solutions to Sheet 1.

Sheet 2 is here

And as a special treat.... here are solutions to Sheet 2.

Sheet 3 is here

And as a special treat.... here are solutions to Sheet 3.

Sheet 4 is here

And as a special treat.... here are solutions to Sheet 4.

Sheet 5 is here

This proves that I love you all.... here are solutions to Sheet 5.

Sheet 6 is here

...as a group and individually.... here are solutions to Sheet 6.

Notes on neutron branching here

Window to the Stars

Rob Izzard, a strange character at the best of times, has taken Dr Peter Eggleton's stellar evolution code and made it accessible to everyone! He calls it "Window to the Stars". You can go to its webpage here and download it yourself. There is a linux and windows version. It should work OK for both...

It will be used for the fourth of the Labs. The manual is here.

Some graphics as used in lectures plus some other stuff...
Some astrophysics links

PAST EXAMS

There are some past exams here. Sometimes this is only the stars part. In the past there were three questions from each half. There are some format changes, some content changes. You should be able to tell if a question is relevant to this year or not!