Anyone interested in Studying Stellar Atmospheres?

[jsandse]

Hi all,

I am currently doing a lot of studying in my spare time of Stellar Atmospheres. Basically we need to understand the atmospheres of stars in order to understand the spectra we take.

I am interested if anyone else is interested in the subject.

And if so would they like take part in a learning course with myself.

The idea would be for us to choose one of the books or courses available online on stellar atmospheres.

Once the reading material has been decided we would choose one topic each week to study from that material and at the end of the week we would have a skype call to present (using powerpoint or whatever) what we have found out - what we understand and what we don't understand etc

There are plenty of books and plenty of free course material out there on stellar atmospheres to chose from.

As an example of the sort of stuff we could cover there is the Rolf Kudritski course:

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/users/kud/teaching_12.html

Let me know if you are interested

cheers

John

[jsandse]

No takers for this from the UK?

So far I have got a couple of people from America and Germany wanting to take part.

Study group will be using some really cool collaborative software http://www.vyew.com and I have set up a yahoo group called Stellar Atmospheres

I am sure it will be exciting and also very challenging.

cheers

John

[ncjunk]

Hi John,

What´s the Yahoo group? I´d be interested in following the discusions you all have but

don´t have time to read up on it too much due to kids and work.

cheers

Neil C

[jsandse]

Hi Neil,

Group is here

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/StellarAtmospheres/

cheers

John

[George Jones]

What´s the Yahoo group? I´d be interested in following the discusions you all have but

don´t have time to read up on it too much due to kids and work.

Because of family and other interests, I doubt that I will be an active participant, but I, too, would like to have a look.

[jsandse]

George,

Appreciate your interest. Am currently really using the group as a holding place for working material that the study group will be producing - and as such dont know how much of it the members of the group will want to share. Things are dynamic with the study group at the moment as we have not yet held our first meeting yet! Once we have met and worked out exactly how the group is being used then we'll make a decision of how much we will share with folks like yourself :0)

cheers

John

[jsandse]

Update on the Stellar Atmospheres Group

Currently the StellarAtmospheres yahoo group is only for people who are (or who want to) participate in the Stellar Atmospheres study group.

The study group is an international group of amateur astronomers (currently 2 germans, 1 belgian, 1 american and 1 uk) who have a serious interest in understanding the stellar atmospheres of stars.

The group holds weekly meetings online using freely available collaborative software at www.vyew.com - the software works excellently for collaborative meetings - we have voice over IP, webcam and can upload material for our meetings to the meeting room, we can also go "off piste" and have one member share their screen with the rest of us and they can show us whatever they want us to see from their desktop. We held our first meeting last Saturday which went really well.

The first book we are working through is Stellar Atmospheres by Erika Bohm Vitense

http://www.amazon.co...pd_bxgy_b_img_b

This text is an undergraduate text in Stellar Atmospheres - although its introductory I would say the text is at about the 2nd/3rd year level on a degree course.

The idea is that each week we read 2 chapters of the book (about 20 pages).

Each individual in the group is assigned some sections within those chapters to report back on - they report back using a powerpoint presentation - and they explain what they understand from those sections and also what they dont at the meeting.

So everyone contributes and the emphasis is on learning and ultimately applying what is being learnt to the amateur astronomy they are doing.

If anyone else is interested to join its not too late.

The beauty about learning this way is that providing you already have a broadband connection, a computer and a headset with microphone then everything is free bar buying the book which is only £15 second hand.

cheers

John

[dharma66]

I probably would have been interested, but work at the moment is crazy. I'd also be a bit concerned about the level at which you are studying, and my ability to contribute.

These books tend to have a lot of maths...are going as deep as working problems andvtakingbthe maths apart? If so, it's probably not for me.

[jsandse]

Hi darma66 the big thing about the study group is that you need to have enough time to study about 15-20 pages of the book each week. You would need to make time for that around your other commitments.

For the maths you would need to be able to be at least at A-level standard I would say - you would need to know calculus in particular - integration and differentiation and be able to solve some differential equations.

cheers

John

[dharma66]

Thanks John. It's too long since I did any real maths, I think. I like to read undergraduate text books, but it's rare I can work any but the easiest of the problems. It's just that the general science books meant for Joe Public never go deep enough, so I read the Uni books to get an idea of deeper concepts, but I can't claim too understand them in the way someone studying at Uni would.

Great idea, and I really wish your group a lot of fun, but I think it's not for me.

Cheers