Astronomy Calculations: Kepler, Distances, Magnitudes & Light

About this course

An astronomy calculations course that works with real IAU, NASA and CODATA constants in a spreadsheet, for students, teachers and amateur astronomers who want to compute the numbers behind the sky. You build the light-year and the parsec from exact constants and convert distances, test Kepler's third law on the eight planets and measure the exponent on a log-log plot, calculate orbital and escape velocities and weigh the Sun from Earth's orbit, turn parallaxes into distances to the nearest stars, use apparent and absolute magnitude and the distance modulus with a standard candle, compute the Sun's luminosity and the sunlight each planet receives with the inverse-square law, read a star's temperature and spectral class from Wien's law and fit the Hubble constant to ten galaxies for the Hubble time. The first lab is free.