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Basic Information

  • Instructors:
  • Craig Cahillane, Physics Building room 257
  • John Hansen, Physics Building room 369
  • Class meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays, in Stolkin Auditorium
  • Section 1: 12:30 - 1:50 PM
  • Section 2: 2:00 - 3:20 PM
  • Office Hours
  • Craig Cahillane, Physics Building room 257
    • Mondays 2:00-4:00 pm
  • John Hansen, Physics Building room 369
  • See “Labs” tab for lab schedule
  • Course website: https://suastronomy.gitlab.io/astro101-2024/
  • Gradescope https://gradescope.com will be used for exam grading and returns.
    • Gradescope Course ID: 818307
    • Gradescope Entry Code: 2BBEJG
  • Poll Everywhere https://pollev.com/astro101syr will be used for in-class participation
  • Teaching assistants:
    • Capuano Caroline
    • Geumhan Kevin
    • Matzner Luke
    • Meagher Breck
    • Rodriguez Jandrie
    • Tiwari Nandita
    • Watt Jasmine

  • Undergraduate coaches:

  • Point of Contact for Registration Issues: Kristine Weisblatt, phyacademics@syr.edu

Teaching Assistants

The lab teaching assistants are PhD students in physics who work as junior instructors as part of their training. They are in charge of leading labs and helping grade your work. You can contact them by email, by going to visit them in the Physics Clinic when they are on duty, or by simply talking to them during lab.

Expectations for the Course

Our expectations from the students for Astronomy 101 are as follows:

  1. Attend every lecture in your section (twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday)

  2. Participate in in-class ABCD questions

  3. Complete the prelab and attend your lab section every week

  4. Complete each homework when assigned (homeworks will help you on the quizzes)

  5. Complete each online quiz on Blackboard after you have finished the homework and the lab from that week

  6. Take every exam (three midterms, one final)

  7. Fairly evaluate your lab group’s performance at the end of the semester

Students can expect the following from the instructors and teaching assistants:

  1. Two lectures a week from the instructors; the slides they are based on will be uploaded to the course website

  2. In-class announcements when new homeworks, prelabs, and quizzes are posted, along with clear deadlines by which these items should be completed.

  3. A lab activity led by your teaching assistant each week, who will assign grades for your work in lab

  4. Opportunities to meet with the professors and your lab TA outside of class to discuss the course material

  5. Immediate feedback on the weekly quizzes (since they are done on Blackboard)

  6. Prompt feedback on the results of exams (posted on Blackboard)

Course Material

This course focuses mostly on the astronomy of the solar system, and is divided into four broad sections:

  1. Celestial motion: How the motions of the Earth, Moon, and Sun cause the changes we see in the sky, including the motion of the stars, the phases of the Moon, and the changing seasons

  2. Astromechanics: how we came to learn that the planets orbit the Sun, the properties of those orbits, and how this led to the origin of the scientific method and of physics

  3. Light: the basic properties of light; how the light from objects depends on their temperature and composition; how the rainbow tells us the nature of the Sun; the properties and design of telescopes

  4. Earth in the Universe: the origin of Earth and the nature of the planets; climate change on Earth; the past, present, and future of spaceflight, and the possibility of life elsewhere

Learning Objectives

A detailed version of the learning objectives for this class is on a separate page.

Grading

Your grade will be based on the following items.

Item Date Points (approximate) Percentage
In-class participation Throughout the semester about 45 5%
Weekly Quizzes Throughout the semester 10-15 each; about 150 total 17%
Exam 1 September 17 about 100 10%
Exam 2 October 10 about 100 10%
Exam 3 November 12 about 100 10%
Final Exam December 13, 3-5 PM about 150 13%
Labs Throughout the semester 30 each; about 300 total 33%
Group Evaluation End of the semester 15 2%


  1. We will not count your lowest in-class participation grade, lowest weekly quiz grade, your lowest lab, or your lowest midterm exam grade.

  2. The final exam will always be counted toward your final grade.

  3. There are no further weights for these items; one point is worth one point, regardless of where it came from.

The sum of the points you have earned will be converted to a percentage of the total and your final grade will be determined as follows:

Grade Minimum Percent Maximum Percent
A 92 100
A- 88 92
B+ 84 88
B 80 84
B- 75 80
C+ 70 75
C 65 70
C- 60 65
D 50 60
F 0 50

(Note that there is no rounding applied to these values.)


Homework

The homework assignments for this class will be posted on a separate page.

Each week’s homework is designed both to let you practice the skills you learned in that week’s lectures and to give you a chance to prepare for the next week’s material by reading the textbook.

You won’t turn your homework in for a grade, but each week’s homework quiz will be based very closely on what you did for homework.

Textbooks

Physics Clinic Hours

The physics clinic is a place where tutors are available to help you on your homework or understanding course concepts. The physics clinic is in Room 112.

The schedule is posted below. These hours are subject to change over the course of the semester. The grey boxes are AST101 TA hours, so try to go to their clinic hours. (These are your lab TA’s, so if you want to see your lab TA outside of lab, you can find them in the Clinic.)

Course philosophy

1. Our birthright: a beautiful Universe

Our class tells the story of how we humans came to understand our place in the Universe, how that Universe works, and how we have used and can continue to use that knowledge to change our lives and our world for the better. Astronomy was the first of the sciences, and the heavens were the playground where the scientific method developed. In our class we will learn how the sky works and how we know about it, but we will also explore what it means for humanity: how over the last few thousand years we have gone from the Stone Age to walking on another world and exploring the furthest reaches of the Universe with our telescopes and other instruments.

2. Reasoning and synthesis, not memorization

This course is emphatically not a class where you will come to lecture, sit there and listen to a presentation of some facts, and then repeat them back on exams. Rather, you will need to think about how we’ve gained the understanding that we have about our universe, and engage in scientific reasoning based on astronomical principles. You are not going to be learning a list of currently-accepted facts; you are going to be practicing skills and learning to see the universe as scientists see it. This will require hard work from you: you’re going to be doing and thinking, not just passively amassing facts.

Some of this will happen during class: we’ll ask you questions and ask you to think about them alongside your classmates, then discuss the answers. Much of it will happen during your homework, when you will need to develop your own reasoning process in detail to figure things out.

3. Group work

One of the most vibrant aspects of university life is the intellectual community you form with your peers. Science, like most areas of human achievement, is not done by individuals working alone; it is a collaborative process.

Thus, you’ll be working in groups of three in your labs. These groups will remain the same throughout the semester; we will assign you to a lab group early in the semester and you will work with them throughout. Every student must turn in a lab sheet at the end of each lab, and all labs must be completed in-person.

During the first lab, you will work with your group to create a set of expectations for group work – how you will work together over the semester. At the end of the semester, we’ll ask you how well your lab group upheld the expectations you set for them.

4. This is your class, too

As part of this philosophy, we welcome your input. If there is some aspect of astronomy that inspires or fascinates you, please ask; if you have feedback for us that will help you enjoy the class more, then please let us know.

Inclusion, Equality, and Dignity

Everyone in this class is an equally-valued member of this university and our community. We expect you to treat your classmates and instructors as honored colleagues in the collective endeavor we are all involved in: to understand the natural world and use that understanding to improve our society.

In particular, bias against or denigration of anyone in our class because of their gender or how they express it, their sexual orientation, their life stance, their national origin, the language they speak, their race or ethnicity, or a disability they may have will not be tolerated. If you are the target of this sort of bias or if you witness it, please report it directly to one of the professors and we will take swift action. If you don’t feel comfortable talking to us, you may report it anonymously to the Physics Department chair at https://syracuseuniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9pORpTKnq6pLeyF.

Course Activities

Readings

We are using a free textbook this semester, but it’s actually quite good – and not excessively long. We won’t be going through the book in order; instead, we will jump around through topics in an order that makes more sense for our class. In some cases, we will provide you a set of notes to read alongside the textbook.

Class Meetings

Tuesdays and Thursdays we will meet in the auditorium. We’ll alternate between presenting material and doing things with it. We want to avoid a “static” lecture as much as possible, and we want to hear your ideas as much as possible during class.

So, during class, we will frequently ask your thoughts on things. Sometimes that will take the form of an informal conversation. Feel free to raise your hands and ask us things. We will also have many “poll” questions in class, which you can answer using multiple-choice cards.

Homework

There will be a short homework assignment each week. These homework assignments are designed to give you an opportunity to practice skills we discuss in class. As part of the homework, we will also direct you to read corresponding sections of the textbook.

Your homework will not be collected. Instead, the weekly online quizzes will reference your homework and ask questions about it.

Weekly quizzes

We will have weekly online quizzes which you will complete on Blackboard. These will be most directly related to your homework (including the assigned textbook reading), but may also tie together things from lecture and lab.

Exams

We will have three midterm exams on each of the first three units and a final exam. These exams will be multiple choice and will cover things from lecture, homework, textbook readings, and the labs.

Labs

AST101 satisfies the laboratory course requirement of the liberal arts core and so it has a lab component. We expect you to attend your lab section every week, and many important course activities take place in the laboratories.

The main ideas of the labs will appear on the weekly online quizzes and on the exams.

Your lab grade will reflect both your learning and participation while in lab and the quality of the work you submit. The point of the lab portion of the class is to learn by doing; it is not to “get the right answers”. Your grade is based on your understanding of what is going on; it is not based only on a mechanical evaluation of whether you “wrote down the right answers or not”.

The lab attendance policy is as follows:

  • You must have completed the prelab before coming to your lab.
  • You must attend the lab section that you registered for.
    • If you anticipate regular conflicts with your scheduled lab time (for instance, if you have registered for a Friday lab but you are on an athletics team that regularly is on the road on Fridays), please switch your enrollment to another lab section.
  • Every student must turn in their own lab sheet.
  • Labs must be completed in-person. No labs done at home and brought in will be accepted.
  • If it is necessary for you to attend a different lab section than you are enrolled in:
    • Contact the TA of another lab section at a time you can attend and ask if they have space
    • If they do, inform your TA that you will be attending their section instead that week, and tell them the reason for your absence
    • Contact your lab group and inform them that you will be absent. (You do not need to tell them why.)
  • Once during the semester, you may switch lab sections for any reason (including not having completed your prelab).
  • If it is necessary for you to switch your lab section more than once, all of those switches must correspond to University-excused absences (see below).
  • You should come to lab on time. TA’s may at their discretion ask students to come to another section if they arrive for lab more than ten minutes late.
  • The TA’s may give a student a zero on a lab at their discretion, including lack of engagment (i.e. playing on the phone or simply copying their group’s work without contributing).
Lab Schedule

We will begin labs during the week of Labor Day during the second week of class. Since there are no classes Monday, this means that the lab week will start on Tuesday and end on Monday (so that students in Monday labs will be the last students to complete any given lab, rather than the first).

We will adjust this in the middle of the semester by omitting one lab from the Monday rotation. After this, the lab week will start on Monday and end on Friday. Students enrolled in Monday labs will complete this omitted lab at the end of the semester.

Requests for Academic Accommodation

Students often have other events in their lives that conflict with their studies. It is our goal to give students an opportunity to learn even if they must miss class occasionally, and to give students a way to be evaluated on their knowledge and ability despite these conflicts. However, because of the large number of students in this class, we are unable to provide ad hoc academic accommodations or to make our own judgments about whether any given event should or should not take precedence over our class’s activities. For fairness, we must establish a policy that applies uniformly to everyone, and defer to other University offices about whether particular absences have the University’s sanction since we do not have the perspective or resources to judge which absences should be excused.

We will omit your lowest quiz grade, lab grade, and midterm exam grade regardless of situation.
We will also allow everyone to switch lab sections once during the semester regardless of reason.
We anticipate that this policy will cover most circumstances. Beyond this, our policy is to offer the following accommodations in class attendance:

Labs:

  • You may attend a different lab section than the one you are registered for once during the semester for any reason, as detailed above
  • You may switch lab sections more than once if all of your absences are university-sanctioned
  • If you miss multiple labs, we will omit up to three lab grades only if:
    • You missed every one of those labs for university-sanctioned or university-excused reasons
    • You were unable to attend a lab section at any time later in the week because of university-sanctioned absences or conflicts with other courses
    • If you knew in advance that your lab section would conflict with other commitments, you made an effort to enroll for a lab section that would not have such conflicts. (For instance, if you will regularly be participating in NCAA-sponsored athletics on Thursdays and/or Fridays, or have a recurring medical appointment, you should enroll in a lab section that meets at another time.)

Quizzes:

Our weekly quizzes will be available to you online for at least five days. We will allow you to take up to three missed quizzes up to a week after your return from a University-sanctioned absence (for instance, illness or injury) if you were unable to complete the quiz during the entire period when the it was available.

Midterm Exams:

If you are unable to take two midterm exams, we will replace both of your missed exam grades with your percentage grade on the final exam. We will do this only if both of your exam absences were for university-sanctioned reasons.

If you miss an exam due to NCAA-sponsored athletics-related travel, you may take the exam on the road so long as:

  • A team official is available to print the exam for you, sit with you while you take the exam, and send us a record of your answers
  • You begin the exam between two hours before and twelve hours after the time that the class starts the exam

Final Exam:

If you are unable to take the final exam due to a University-sanctioned absence (such as illness or injury), we will give you an opportunity to make up the final exam. We expect you to do this as soon as possible after you return. Note that we will not arrange online final exams for students who leave Syracuse for break early.

Exam Scheduling for Students with Disabilities:

Students who receive extended time from the Center for Disability Resources on exams should schedule to take their exams as soon as practical with CDR on the day of the exam. Note that:

  • (IMPORTANT new CDR rule): You must register with CDR the week before taking the exam. They will not let you show up and take the exam unannounced.
  • You may not finish your exam at CDR before the rest of the class has begun to take it
  • We will not require you to miss other classes to make use of your extended time at CDR
  • You should schedule your exam as soon as practical after the nominal time of the exam, but may do so on the following day if necessary
  • If you take an exam on a different day than scheduled, it is your responsibility to email the instructors at astro101@syr.edu when you are done so we can pick up your exam paper for grading

University-Sanctioned Absences:

An absence is university-sanctioned if:

  • The Barnes Center or Student Outreach and Retention sends the instructors a notice requesting accommodations for you on the specific date of the absence
  • You are receiving medical treatment at the time of the absence (documented either by the Barnes Center or by your provider)
  • A NCAA-affiliated athletics team sends a notice requesting accommodations for you on the date of the absence
  • Another University-related organization (for instance, the marching band or ROTC cadre) requests accommodations for you
  • You have registered a religious observance with the University
  • You are attending an academic conference related to your studies

Incompletes:

The University allows us to give students a final grade with an “incomplete” tag. This indicates that a student has not finished all of their work, but has an arrangement with a professor to complete that work after the semester has closed and receive a higher grade once it is complete.

This arrangement is not designed to allow students to “make up” large portions of a course, no matter how justified the reason for their absence. In that event, the appropriate thing is to retake the course. (Note that Syracuse University automatically uses only the highest grade for students who take courses more than once.)

We will make “incomplete” arrangements only if:

  • You have missed up to three weeks of our course or missed the final exam for an extended University-sanctioned absence
  • You have contacted Student Outreach and Retention about your situation and they agree an incomplete is appropriate
  • Your grade on the portion of the course you have completed is C+ or better
  • You notify us of the situation as soon as possible upon your return to class, rather than waiting until the end of the semester

Course Fee Information

To support the laboratory and related class meet experiments in the co-requisite course, AST 101, you have been charged a course fee of $50. This fee helps pay for (i) laboratory manuals and other handouts, (ii) supplies, apparatus, and maintenance for laboratory equipment, (iii) supplies and small pieces of apparatus for class meets, and (iv) undergraduate students (coaches) assisting you in the labs/recitations.

Academic integrity

Our goal in this class is to educate on the basics of astronomy and humanity’s place in the universe.
We are also tasked with the evaluation of student comprehension of the subject matter periodically thorughout the course.
This evaluation is in no small way tied to a student’s appearance of compentence to outside observers, and so we must ensure the evaluation is a fair representation of the student’s knowledge.

As such, if you pass off someone else’s work as your own in this class, you are depriving yourself of of the value of education itself. This class is designed so that any student who works hard and keeps up will pass. You do not need to substitute someone else’s work or knowledge for your own; your own talents, your own skill, and your own work are enough.

While you are encouraged to discuss everything in the course with your peers, all work you submit must reflect your own understanding and be a product of your own effort. We may impose a grade sanction up to course failure for any instance of academic dishonesty. Syracuse University’s Academic Integrity Policy governs general expectations for students and is incorporated into this syllabus by reference.

On your weekly quizzes, you may consult any references you wish as long as you are doing this to gain understanding rather than to copy answers. For instance, you may read Wikipedia articles, Google things, talk to your classmates, consult your textbook, etc., but you may not solicit answers to copy.

No artificial intelligence, chatbot, or large language model like ChatGPT is permitted for use in this class.

Students with disabilities and other access challenges

Syracuse University values diversity and inclusion; we are committed to a climate of mutual respect and full participation. If there are aspects of the instruction or design of this course that result in barriers to your inclusion and full participation in this course, please contact us to discuss accommodations we can make to ensure that the class is accessible to you, or collaborate with the Center for Disability Resources (CDR) in this process.

If you would like to discuss disability-related accommodations with CDR, please visit their website at disabilityservices.syr.edu, visit them in person in Room 309 of 8047 University Avenue, or call (315) 443-4498, TDD: (315) 443-1371 for an appointment to discuss your needs and the process for requesting accommodations. CDR is responsible for coordinating disability-related accommodations. Since accommodations may require early planning and generally are not provided retroactively, please contact CDR as soon as possible.

CDR coordinates academic accommodations to students who have short-term illnesses (physical or mental). If you are injured or ill and need academic accommodations beyond short-term due date extensions for AST101, we will likely design those accommodations for you in collaboration with CDR.

All materials that we have developed this class are the copyright of their authors, but we do not intend to restrict their use; anyone may use them under the Creative Commons cc-by-nc-sa license, which gives you the right to share our materials freely or adapt them so long as you credit their authors, do not use them for commercial purposes, and require that anyone else distributing them also license them under these same terms.

You are free to record class for your personal use but those recordings are not included in this license; those may not be distributed outside of our class without our permission to protect students’ freedom of expression in class.

Note that uploading materials to Chegg, CourseHero, or similar websites constitutes commercial use and is thus not allowed.

Solemn observances

SU’s religious observances notification and policy, found at http://hendricks.syr.edu/spiritual-life/index.html, recognizes the diversity of faiths represented among the campus community and protects the rights of students, faculty, and staff to observe religious holidays according to their tradition. Under the policy, students are provided an opportunity to make up any examination, study, or work requirements that may be missed due to a religious observance provided they notify their instructors before the end of the second week of classes. An online notification process is available for students in My Slice / StudentServices / Enrollment / MyReligiousObservances / Add a Notification.

If you must miss your lab because of a solemn observance or any other reason, please discuss this with your group and arrange to attend at a different time that week.