Introduction to Astronomy and Astrophysics

Since the dawn of civilisation, humans have looked up at the night sky in amazement, awe and bewilderment.  Apart from the moon, planets and stars (and the increasing frequent satellites!), we see rare phenomenon such as eclipses, comets, meteors. This course will take you on a whirlwind tour of the cosmos, from our Sun to the most distant galaxies in the Universe. Along the way, we will understand how we measure distances to stars and galaxies; how we measure their masses; and how we know that the Universe is expanding, even accelerating in its expansion. 

The course will explain how stars are powered, and what their life-cycles are like. Our own Milky Way galaxy consists of ~100 billion stars, and one super-massive black hole at its centre, just like most galaxies do.  How do we know all this? – through painstakingly detailed observations, coupled with some clever physics theories.  Observations rely on modern-day telescopes, which not only sense visible light, but infrared, radio-waves, X-rays and gravitational waves.  This multi-messenger approach has allowed us to build a coherent picture of the Universe we inhabit, and this course will teach you all about its many different components, both visible and invisible.

This course would be of interest to students of Physics, especially Astrophysics and Astronomy, as well as those with an interest in the works of the ELT and similar projects. Further details will be provided soon. 

Prof Niranjan Thatte is Senior Research Fellow in Astrophysics at Lady Margaret Hall, and Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford's Department of Physics. He is Principal Investigator for HARMONI, the first light spectrograph for the European Extremely Large Telescope being built by the European Southern Observatory, and for the SWIFT integral Field Spectrograph, a common-user facility at the Palomar 200 inch telescope. His scientific research focus is on nuclear regions of galaxies and on direct imaging of extra-solar planets.

Available as a Residential course on the following dates: 

Session 1: 28th June - 16th July 2027

Click below to find out how to apply.