ASTRONOMY 4, Section 1

Web page for CCSF Astronomy 4, Sect. 1, Spring 2008

Unpleasant and unfortunate situation: I’ve been largely bedridden and in and out of urgent care for the past week, battling two concurrent infections, each of them fairly seriously debilitating in their own ways. The first one became severe because the bacteria did not respond to the antibiotic I was first prescribed. While a second antibiotic was effective for beating that original infection, I had also picked up a flu-like virus by then. The combination of a runaway bacterial inflammation running through some of my internal organs together with the flu-like virus is not an experience that I really want to describe in too much detail. The hardest days of all were Friday and Sunday. I’m very glad to have nothing much of it all left now but some residual internal discomfort and a sometimes nasty cough.

I still have just one more exam to give for another class on Friday afternoon. After that, I will be in my office only occasionally throughout the summer. Please e-mail me if you’d like to arrange a summer meeting.

I still haven’t responded to most of the e-mails that were sent me during the past 7 days, nor have I done any more of the grading. My long weekend and most of next week will include lots and lots of grading. CCSF’s deadline to me for submitting the final grades is June 4^th.

I haven’t created an answer key for Homework #11 either, so I might as well extend the deadline for that and for Homework #12 for anyone who still wants to do those-- deadline as late as the end of the day, Tuesday, May 27^th.

Basically, I haven’t been good for hardly anything! Given how already inappropriately behind I was in grading your homework, I’m not sure how to apologize. (Every semester, without fail, I get at least a couple of students who say something to me along the lines of “this has been my most horrible semester ever for things happening to me,” and this time I think I have a better appreciation than I ever have before of how such students really feel.)

Here are the final assignments of the semester:

Homework Assignment #11

Homework Assignment #12

Below are links to copies of my most recently used PowerPoint slides:

PowerPoint on Habitable Zones (mix of Chapters 10 and 11)

PowerPoint on Extra-Solar Planets (Chapter 11)

PowerPoint on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Chapter 12)

PowerPoint on the Fermi Paradox (Chapter 13)

PowerPoint on Interstellar Travel (Chapter 13)

And here are links to some of the past homework answer keys: (I am no longer accepting late assignments for these.)

Homework Assignment #1 Answer Key

Homework Assignment #2 Answer Key