1.

1a.  See my week 7 instructor notes for a brief summary of this week's material.

1b.  For images and information on active galactic nuclei, as well as numerous links to images of gravitational lensing, go to the following:  AGN & LENSING INFORMATION

1c.  See the following for the best tutorial on the Big Bang Theory I've seen to date:  http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm
He also takes on the controversy (mostly inside the U.S.) between young-Earth creationists and cosmologists - see his link titled "Cosmology, Religion, and Kansas."   If the arguments between scientists and creationists interests you, the U.S. National Academy of Science wrote a comprehensive document that you can view at: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/creationism/

1d.  If you have trouble understanding the flatness, horizon, and matter/anti-matter problems that faced early Big-Bang cosmologists, the following short article does a very good job of explaining them:
http://www.astronomy.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/000/755otnrx.asp

1e.  Click on the following to go to a page of URLs for supplemental information concerning the cosmic microwave background radiation.  The links show COBE images not in your text as well as the most recent sets of observations by the MAP mission - very important results for cosmologists.

1f.  The following link takes you to a report from a thorough sky survey effort, and the conclusion that correlating the observed galaxy distribution with the recent MAP observations requires dark energy to explain both data sets.   This evidence is independent of that described in item 1g & f below.
http://www.sdss.org/news/releases/20030721.darkenergy.html

1g.  http://snap.lbl.gov/brochure/index.html
This is an extremely well-written and clear description of the supernova Ia technique for observing the accelerating expansion of our universe.  While the intent is to sell a proposed SNAP space-based observatory to collect thousands more sets of such supernova data, the website presents the clearest discussion of this topic I've seen yet.

1f.  Click on the following for streaming video of an HST press conference explaining the observation and huge significance of the most distant Ia supernova in understanding the expansion of the universe:
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2001/09/live-replay.html
The panelists are some of today's most famous astrophysicists, and they address in understandable terms the acceleration of our expanding universe.  I particularly enjoyed the discussion of 'serendipity' (which played a major role in the discovery) near the end of the 40 minute video.  This critically important discovery apparently almost cinches the case for an accelerating universe (with the strange concept of 'dark energy') that began with a Big Bang.  Since 2001, the two SN Ia teams have jointly discovered and used several more very distant supernovae, using the Hubble Space Telescope:  for example, see:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040227.html and
http://www.space-explorers.com/internal/common/offsite.asp?link=http://hubblesite.org/news/2004/12

2.  Respond with written answers to the week 7 discussion questions.   I'll take questions about these during class time.   Assess your responses by comparing with my unit 7 DQ responses on this web-site, as instructed on my responses page.  Turn these in the first day of week 8.