All students please read the course syllabus carefully. To see the assignments, click on the appropriate unit below. They will be made available one at a time, at the start of each week during the course.

WEEK	TEXTBOOK UNITS	SUBJECT MATERIAL
Week 1 Assignments	5, 6, 8	How Science Works, Night Sky, Sun & Moon Motion
Week 2 Assignments	11, 12, 21, 22, 29	History, Planet Motion, Gravity, Light, Telescopes
Week 3 Assignments	49 to 51	Our Sun, Star Properties
Week 4 Assignments	55, 58 to 63	Formation & Structure of Stars
Week 5 Assignments	64 to 66	Stellar Evolution, Death, Remnants
Week 6 Assignments	70 to 73	Milky Way & Other Normal Galaxies
Week 7 Assignments	76 to 82	Active Galaxies, Cosmology, Big Bang
Week 8 Assignments	33, 41, 45 to 48	Formation of Our Solar System, Debris
Week 9 Assignments	35 to 40, 43, 44	Planets
Week 10 Assignments	83, 84	Life in the Universe

Introduction to Astronomy is a 5-credit, non-lab course that provides an introduction to night sky viewing, the history of astronomy, the use of light and telescopes in astronomy, planetary science (including small objects in our solar system), solar science, recent findings in the search for planets outside our solar system, the science of our Sun and other stars, star clusters, normal and active galaxies, and cosmology (the formation and evolution of our universe).  Emphasis is on comparison of theories of planetary, stellar, galactic, and universal evolution with observable features of our universe.  Students will see how 20th century modern physics provides natural explanations for unusual objects and events in the universe, including star formation, star explosions, white dwarf stars, neutron stars, stellar black holes, dark matter, quasars and other bizarre galaxies, the expanding universe, and the known features of chemical abundances throughout the universe.  The course meets distribution requirements for the AA degree.

Assignments for this course will include reading from sources outside the textbook.   This will include Internet material and articles from the periodicals Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, and Scientific American, all written for arm-chair astronomers just like us.  For a list of some internet websites I've used a lot, go to my list of websites and do some surfing.  For a list of articles pertinent to various topics in astronomy, go to my list of magazine articles going back to late 1996.  To use WCC library online services to view contents of magazine articles, see the instructions for using Ebsco and Proquest (whether from on-campus or someplace else).

The course lasts nominally 10 weeks, and we will cover new content each calendar week.  Each weekly assignment will include some discussion questions to answer, and a multiple choice quiz.  See the syllabus for details.