Winter Term 2024/2025

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Diese Vorlesung ist der erste Teil der Einführung in die Astronomie und Astrophysik, 
also in das physikalische Verständnis unsres Universum jenseits unserer Erde. 
Laut Modulhandbuch werden wir folgende Themenkreise behandeln:
— Astronomische Grundlagen : astronomische Beobachtung;
     elektromagnetische Strahlung; Entfernungsmessung; Sonnensystem 
— Physik der Sterne: Sternaufbau und stellare 
    Energieerzeugung; Sternatmosphären und Spektren
— Phasen der Sternentwicklung: von der sog. Hauptreihe bis 
    zu Supernovae und schwarzen Löchern
— Physik des interstellaren Mediums: Gas und Staub; 
    Heizung und Kühlung; Anreicherung mit Metallen

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See module handbook

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Observational methods using photons (from gamma rays to radio), gravitational waves, other particles, and in-situ exploration

Course Information

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The lecture is equivalent to the bachelor module parts WPAstro.1+2 during the winter and summer terms but requires a slightly higher level of basic physical knowledge. 


Nevertheless also motivated 3rd semester BSc students are welcome to participate. 
This lecture is organised as a block course with 2 parts from Sep. 23rd - Oct. 11th, 2024. 

Certificates are only given for active participation in the exercises (meaning also being present at all exercises) and passing the written examination.

Homework should/can be done in groups of 2(3)

Bachelor students

You can choose:

WPAstro.1,2:
- 8CP with marks (lab course needed for complete module)
- The written examination will be graded
- Marks count for the full 10CP including the lab course

MVAstro0:
- 8CP, no marks as a master module in the ‘Wahlbereich’
-
Master students (MVAstro0)
- 8CP, no marks - only passed
- Can be used as part of MVMod (specialisation in Astrophysics)
- Can be used as an option: just 8CP

PhD (including IMPRS)
Active participation in exercises is strongly recommended, and a successful written exam for certificate

More info on the rules for studying astronomy in Heidelberg: https://www.zah.uni-heidelberg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/downloads/Miscellaneous/Studyplan_Astro_English.pdf


Lecturers: Prof. Dr. Stefan Jordan, Dr. Markus Pössel

Lecture Introduction to Astronomy (V, block)
Time: daily 9:30 - 13:00, 23.09. - 11.10.2024 (1 free day on October 3)
Location: gHS (großer Hörsaal at Phil.12, 2nd floor) 

Exercises to Introduction to Astronomy 
Time: daily 14:30 - 16:00 (group 1), 16:00-17:30 (group 2)
Location: Neuer Hörsaal (at Phil.12)

Exercises are planned for:
Monday, Sep 23, Wednesday, Sep 27, Friday, Sep 29, Wednesday, October 4 (for part I)
Friday, Oct 6, Monday, Oct 9, Wednesday, Oct 11, Friday, Oct 13 (for part II)

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23.9.  Introduction/Fundamentals of Astronomy: Jordan
24.9.  Fundamentals 2: Jordan
25.9.  Sun and Planetary System 1: Jordan
26.9.  Sun an Planetary System 2: Jordan
27.9.  Telescopes and Instruments: Jordan
30.9.  Radiation and stars: Jordan
1.10.  Stellar evolution: Jordan
2.10.  Introduction; Expanding Universes 1: Pössel
4.10.  Expanding Universes 2; Big Bang Phase: Pössel
7.10.  Structure Formation; Basic Galaxy Properties: Pössel
8.10.  Galaxy Spectra; Stellar Motion in Galaxies 1: Pössel
9.10.  Stellar Motions in Galaxies 2; Star Formation in Galaxies; The Milky Way: Pössel
10.10. Central Black Holes; Active Galaxies; Gravitational Lensing: Pössel
11.10. Galaxy Groups and Clusters; Milky Way Archaeology; Galaxy Evolution: Pössel
TBD:  Written exam

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CONTENT: 
Diurnal and annual motions, precession and nutation, sidereal and solar time clocks, Earth-sky trajectory of a planet from its orbital elements

https://wwwstaff.ari.uni-heidelberg.de/mitarbeiter/gparm/celmech.html


COURSE SLIDES: via Moodle.  The `Enrolment key' (`Einschreibeschluessel') will be provided during the first lecture.  It will NOT be provided by email. 


REMARK:
Lecture room to be ventilated regularly.  Please dress up accordingly.

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Lecture on the formation of stars and planets. 
More details can be found on the course website (see link below).

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The diverse astronomical and astrophysical distance determination methods will be introduced and illustrated with examples, covering all distance ranges from parallax measurements of nearby stars to cosmological methods.

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From binaries to Dwarf galaxies and everything in between: Binaries; Star clusters: chemical elements & their formation; dynamics & structure; dwarf galaxies: chemical evolution & Dark Matter; different flavours of star clusters and dwarf galaxies.

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As most of the radiation we receive from galaxies is star light, we can use it to measure and study their properties. These lectures aim at showing how much we can learn about galaxy evolution from the study of their stellar populations (young to old stellar clusters, field stars, resolved and integrated stellar populations). We will review the methods commonly used in this respect, all resting on our understanding of stellar evolution, and discuss the results obtained when we apply them to observational data, such as multi-wavelength photometry and spectroscopy.

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C1: - Basic properties of fluids and plasmas in astrophysics
	Ideal versus dissipative fluids
	Euler and the Navier-Stokes equations
	Compressible, weakly compressible and incompressible fluid flows
	Magnetohydrodynamics
C2: Numerical methods in hydrodynamics
	The equations in the finite space
	Conditionally versus unconditionally stable numerical schemes
Explicit & implicit formulation
	Preconditioning techniques and defect-correction iteration procedure

C3: Introduction to programming and computer-solving of simple      
       equations
C4: Introduction to General Relativity & Relativistic Cosmology
	Derivation of the relativistic & general relativistic Euler and Navier-Stokes equations
	Dynamics of the expanding univbbbberse
	Basic concepts in modern cosmology: 
Black holes, dark matter, dark energy, inflation
C5: Numerical aspects of relativistic Cosmology: UNIMOUN

Course Information

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Stellar structure, evolution and explosions including practical tutorials based on the MESA stellar evolution code

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Introduction to the dynamics of systems dominated by gravity (from planetary systems to galaxies) and their numerical treatment.

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This lecture is an introduction to molecular astrophysics and astrochemistry.

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This is a five day block course with lectures in the morning and practical hands-on exercises in the afternoon. We will learn the basic technique to use GPU (graphical processing units, graphics cards) for numerical accelerated computing at the example of CUDA - an extension of the C programming language, which is used for the NVIDIA GPU accelerated supercomputer to be used in our course. More general approaches for other systems will be discussed. Concepts of parallel programming are introduced. GPU accelerated parallel computing is a technique, which is now widely used in computational physics and astrophysics. Many supercomputers of EuroHPC Petascale systems use GPU.
Topics: Parallel Computing, GPU Hardware, Elements of CUDA Language, Data Transfer, Vector and Matrix Operations, Simple Application for N-Body Problem.

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- Lessons learned from gravitational wave sources.
- Compact object formation from stars and binary stars.
- Dynamics of compact objects in dense star clusters.
- Merger rate density evolution of binary compact objects across cosmic time.
- Observations and models of dormant compact objects.
- Numerical models of compact-object populations.

Goal

After completion of this course, the students will acquire state-of-the-art knowledge in the field of astrophysical compact objects. They will be aware of the main results of gravitational-wave observatories, and will have advanced knowledge of the formation channels of binary compact objects and dormant black holes. They will run some of the main scripts and codes to model compact object formation (population synthesis codes, direct N-body codes, semi-analytic codes, simplified LIGO-Virgo data analysis scripts).

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The physics of the Universe during the Dark Ages between recombination and reionization.

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- Observable signatures of black holes and binaries thereof, calculations of predictions in GR
- Post-Newtonian approximation
- 3+1, Numerical Relativity
- Black Hole images with Very-Long baseline Interferometry (EHT): theory and data analysis
- Accreting black holes, GRMHD
- Bayesian Methods
- Simulated data generation and utilization: eht-imaging, PyCBC, Bilby, Themis

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https://www.thphys.uni-heidelberg.de/%7Eamendola/lss-ws2024.html

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- Basic concepts of numerical simulations, continuous and discrete simulations
- Discretization or ordinary differential equations, integration schemes of different order
- N-Body problems, molecular dynamics, collisionless systems
- Discretization of partial differential equations
- Finite element and finite volume methods
- Lattice methods
- Adaptive mesh refinement and multi-grid methods
- Matrix solvers and FFT methods
- Monte Carlo methods, Markov Chains, applications in statistical physics

Goal

After completion of this module, the students are endowed with the capacity to identify and classify numerical problems. They have reached active understanding of applicable numerical methods and algorithms. They are able to solve basic physical problems with adequate numerical techniques and to recognize the range of validity of numerical solutions.

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Von der Entstehung der Sonne, über die Entwickliung der Protoplanetaren Scheibe zu Planeten mit ihren Ringen und Satelliten, Exo-Planeten und die Frage der Bewohnbarkeit.

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Journal Club on all issues related to galaxy evolution.

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Presentations of and discussions on new literature and research projects of the stellradynamics group at ARI

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Detection of Extrasolar Planets, including observing methods, data analysis and technical questions

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presentations and discussions on current research in the field of hot stars

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20 Beobachtungsabende nach Vereinbarung

Course Information

Die Beispiele im Kurs benutzen Physik der
ersten paar Semester.

There are some examples in the course that
are based on physics of the first few semesters.

Content

Dieser Kurs wurde von Dr. Thomas P. Robitaille entwickelt, der diesen Kurs viele Jahre lang an der Universität Heidelberg gehalten hat. Aufgrund der Beliebtheit dieses Kurses bieten wir nun mehrere Blockkurse parallel an. Dr. Robitaille hat eine andere Stelle angetreten, so dass dieser Kurs nun von anderen Lehrkräften gehalten wird.

Goal

Ziel dieses Kurses ist es, zu lernen, wie man die Python-Programmierung zur Lösung wissenschaftlicher Probleme einsetzt. Es handelt sich um einen interaktiven Learning-by-Doing-Kurs, der auf einer Reihe von Python-Notebooks basiert und zahlreiche Übungen enthält. Er richtet sich an Bachelor-Studenten.

Course Information

Content

Dieser Kurs wurde von Dr. Thomas P. Robitaille entwickelt, der diesen Kurs viele Jahre lang an der Universität Heidelberg gehalten hat. Aufgrund der Beliebtheit dieses Kurses bieten wir nun mehrere Blockkurse parallel an. Dr. Robitaille hat eine andere Stelle angetreten, so dass dieser Kurs nun von anderen Lehrkräften gehalten wird.

Goal

Ziel dieses Kurses ist es, zu lernen, wie man die Python-Programmierung zur Lösung wissenschaftlicher Probleme einsetzt. Es handelt sich um einen interaktiven Learning-by-Doing-Kurs, der auf einer Reihe von Python-Notebooks basiert und zahlreiche Übungen enthält. Er richtet sich an Bachelor-Studenten.

Course Information

Content

Dieser Kurs wurde von Dr. Thomas P. Robitaille entwickelt, der diesen Kurs viele Jahre lang an der Universität Heidelberg gehalten hat. Aufgrund der Beliebtheit dieses Kurses bieten wir nun mehrere Blockkurse parallel an. Dr. Robitaille hat eine andere Stelle angetreten, so dass dieser Kurs nun von anderen Lehrkräften gehalten wird.

Goal

Ziel dieses Kurses ist es, zu lernen, wie man die Python-Programmierung zur Lösung wissenschaftlicher Probleme einsetzt. Es handelt sich um einen interaktiven Learning-by-Doing-Kurs, der auf einer Reihe von Python-Notebooks basiert und zahlreiche Übungen enthält. Er richtet sich an Bachelor-Studenten.

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Scientific writing is an essential skill: The aim of the seminar is to write a short article about a curious and interesting physics result and potentially publish it in the online journal Phoebe. We guide the student through the writing process.

Goal

being able to write a short, accessible scientific article, understand the essentials of scientific writing