Credit Hours: 3
Prerequisites: Astronomy I (Astr-1010) and Astronomy II (Astr-1020) with a grade of A- or better, and permission of instructor. Enrollment is limited to 10 students.
Room: Harry D. Powell Observatory
Instructor: Dr. Gary Henson/ Dr. Beverly Smith      
Email:

Office: Brown Hall Room 272/273        
Phone: (423)-439-6906/(423)-439-8418

COURSE DESCRIPTION: A self-paced hands-on laboratory course on variable stars.

SPECIFIC COURSE RULES AND REQUIREMENTS:

• There will be no lectures in this course. This is solely a self-paced laboratory course.
• Students will make approximately weekly observations of variable stars using the 14-inch Celestron Telescope at the Harry D. Powell Observatory.
• Students must have flexible schedules, and must be capable of working independently. They must be available to observe when the weather permits.
• There will be no quizzes, exams, or final in this course.
• There will be assigned readings and on-line homework.
• From the observations, visual magnitudes of each star must be extracted.
• For each star, a light curve must be made (a plot of magnitude vs. Julian Day).
• Students must submit a final written report.
• Students will be contributing to scientific research by submitting their final data set to the web site of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). The AAVSO data is used by astronomers around the world for research on variable stars.