Exploring the Milky Way Course

In this course we travel up to about 500,000 light years and explore our home galaxy in detail.
Version 6.2.

TitleDescriptionRun
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Review previous course Review of the course Leaving the Solar System. Korulogo 75png
Sense of Scale & the Milky Way in the Sky Continuing our scale model up to about 500,000 light years. The basics of the Milky Way galaxy. How do we see it and how does it move in the sky? Korulogo 75png
Finding Structure History of how we learned about our galaxy. Korulogo 75png
Galactic Distance Cosmic distance ladder continued. Main Sequence Fitting, Luminosity and Distance, Cepheids and RR Lyrae. Korulogo 75png
Structure of the Milky Way How we have learned about the galactic structure in detail. Latest results and questions. Korulogo 75png
Dynamics of the Milky Way & Dark Matter How do we move in space; density waves in spiral arms; galaxy rotation and mass; rotation curve mystery and Dark Matter. Korulogo 75png
Dwarfs, Streams and Galactic History Dwarf galaxies and Streams around the Milky Way and their dynamics. How they reveal the history of our Galaxy. Korulogo 75png
Towards the Centre The bulge, long bar and the very dynamic centre of our galaxy. Latest observations. Korulogo 75png
Special Relativity Low-level-mathematical but comprehensive introduction to Galilean and Special Relativity. Korulogo 75png
General Relativity Low-level-mathematical but comprehensive introduction to General relativity. This is also a preparation for Cosmology in the course Going Deep. Korulogo 75png
Black Holes History of our developing knowledge about Black Holes in general, what we know about our own Supermassive Black Hole. We also briefly review the recent imaging of the Supermassive Black Hole in galaxy M87 by the Event Horizon Telescope consortium. Korulogo 75png
Beyond the Visible Overview Multi-wavelength astronomy. Radio including VLBI, Infrared, Visible light, Ultraviolet, X-ray and Gamma-ray. History and Detection technology. Korulogo 75png