Ay 102
Physics of the Interstellar Medium
Winter term 2011
Basic information:
- Instructor: Christopher Hirata [chirata at tapir dot caltech dot edu; office: Cahill #272]
- TA: Ke (Coco) Zhang [kzhang at caltech dot edu; office: South Mudd #158]
- Class hours: Mon, Wed, Fri, 11:00-12:00 in Cahill #219
- Office hours: Tues 4-5pm at Coco's office
- Homeworks due: Wednesdays
- Textbook: Osterbrock & Ferland, Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei, 2nd ed.
Course description:
An introduction to the properties of interstellar matter, the physical processes that govern it, and observations of the ISM. Topics include: photoionized nebulae; interstellar dust; atomic,
molecular, and hot gas; absorption lines; hydrodynamics and shocks; magnetic fields; and cosmic rays and high-energy processes in the ISM.
[Course Details -- PDF format]
Homework & Exams
Midterm solutions are here.
Final exam solutions are here.
Lecture Notes, Presentations, and External Resources
Introduction; sky maps and the ISM's appearance across the EM spectrum
- Sky maps as shown in class.
- If you like maps, a good online resource is SkyView hosted at the Goddard Space Flight Center.
Atomic structure: hydrogen, helium, and metals
- Lecture notes.
- The NIST atomic spectra database allows you to obtain energy levels, spectral line parameters,
and level diagrams (Grotrian diagrams) for almost any atom or atomic cation.
- Reading: related material can be found in the appendix to Osterbrock & Ferland, or Section 2.1 of Dopita & Sutherland.
H II regions
- Lecture notes & associated reading:
- Pictures shown in class:
- The ESO public archive contains some beautiful pictures of star-forming regions, planetary nebulae, etc.
- The narrow-band images of the Ring Nebula are from Lame & Pogge.
- The spectral simulation code Cloudy will be needed for several of the homeworks (and is generally a useful tool).
Dust
- Lecture notes & associated reading:
- Bruce Draine's dust page: an excellent resource on grain size distributions, extinction curve fitting, etc.
- Dust grain alignment and polarization have become hot topics due to their importance as a foreground for CMB studies. A pedagogical report on this subject can be found in Fraisse et al (this is however not required material for the class).
Molecular spectroscopy
Photodissociation regions
Diffuse ISM
Hydrodynamics, MHD, and Shocks
Pulsars & Radio Wave Propagation as Probes of the ISM
Cosmic Rays
- Lecture nots:
- GALPROP -- the giant cosmic ray transport code.
Last updated Monday, March 21, 2011