Swinburne University of Technology coursework.
To further my interest in astronomy, I am studying a number of online astronomy courses presented by Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. Their internet address is http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao
Note that this is not an advert for Swinburne, there are a number of online astronomy courses available (just enter 'online astronomy courses' or similar into you search engine to find some). From those available, however, Swinburne's was the best one for me.
The material is introduced on CD-Rom, with in depth reading from a number of set books. Assessment is by a combination of computer marked tests, assessed newsgroup postings, essays and projects. These are supervised by members of Swinburne's staff, who are experienced professional astronomers.
The following links are to essays and projects submitted by me for assessment, some are html files while some are in the original Word98 format (sorry, but converting them to html files is beyond me!). They are the unassessed versions, and any errors or omissions are all my own work! Plagiarists beware!! More will be added as they are completed.
Course HET602, Exploring the Solar System (semester 2, 2000).
Essay: How space probes have helped us to advance our models of the formation and structure of the Solar System. (23kb)
Project: Solar System Dynamics. (279kb)
Course HET603, Exploring Stars and the Milky Way (semester 1, 2001).
Essay: Why do the stars in Orion look so different from each other? (Word file 28kb)
Project: Determining the distance to the Hyades using the moving cluster method, and discussing the method's extreme sensitivity to errors in the data. (Word file 747kb)
Course HET604, Exploring Galaxies and the Cosmos (semester 2, 2001).
Essay: How will the Universe end? (Word file 55kb)
Project: Inside out or outside in; how did our Galaxy form? (106kb)