I’ve just started the SAO course, and was looking for some examples of projects to help guide me in what they were looking for (I got told they didn’t provide example projects).

Cheers again.

The HET602 unit is a quite gentle introduction and not heavily technical unless you want it to be. All the terminology and concepts areintroduced in the course material and reading. From memory, and subject to changes over the years, units typically provide a set of topics for the essay and project components. Alternatively, subject to supervisor agreement, you could choose your own topic for the project. Topics ranged from items targeting those with a more general or teaching interest through to those with mathematics background. You could get through the Masters level course without picking on anything too heavy mathematically. (This might have changed).

In the case of this particular exercise the topic was a given as was the simulator to run things in. I had an engineering mathematics base and some experience in simulation to build on; so I went with this topic.

Thanks for posting examples of your work when you did SAO. Did you have to come up with your own topic for the assignments, or was there a list of suggested projects as well?

I am thinking of starting HET602 but have no background in Astronomy – therefore your rather advanced project on Solar System dynamics has me scared for a newbie wishing to start out.

Cheers!

Chris W

Thanks for the question. Unfortunately, probably not.

It is possible that you chanced upon an occultation (like in the article) but these are typically a single disappearance event lasting a few seconds. They’re also fairly rare events on naked-eye visible stars.

Most of the variations you see in a star’s brightness are the result of turbulence in our atmosphere. The path of light from the star to your eye is bent by the air, which as it moves, moves some of the star’s light in and out of your vision. This is the twinkling star of nursery rhyme fame, and also why astronomer’s want to put telescopes (like Hubble) above the air.

Another effect comes about when one stares directly at a point-like light light. Every so often, as your eye naturally twitches about, the star’s light will fall onto the end of your optic nerve… a blind spot in your vision. The star “disappears” but quickly reappears.

If you had seen a star that, over minutes, got massively bright (say as bright as the Moon) before fading gradually then you might have seen a supernova. That would be a truly magnificent event that should be reported to your local observatory with a location in the sky.

I hope this helps,
Chris W

Sorry, couldn’t help myself