Deep Physics: Astronomy and Cosmology for Talented High Schoolers
Real astronomy and cosmology, taught from celestial mechanics through stellar physics, galaxies, and the Big Bang. A Modern Physics elective for talented high schoolers.
Online for homeschool families anywhere · or in-person in Princeton, NJ
A World Through the Lens of Astronomy and Cosmology
Astronomy is physics applied to objects we cannot visit. Stars, galaxies, the universe itself: every property we know about them is read off their light, their motion, their geometry.
Look up at the night sky. The light from Andromeda has been travelling 2.5 million years to reach your eye. You are seeing the galaxy as it was when our first hominid ancestors walked the African plains.
Hold a prism up to starlight. The spectrum is crossed with dark absorption lines. Those lines tell you, without ever leaving Earth, exactly which elements live in the star’s atmosphere.
The cosmic microwave background fills all of space. Photons that were once searing hot, now cooled to 2.7 kelvin. The leftover light of the universe when it was 380,000 years old.
The night sky has stars that look red, white, and blue. The colour of each one is set by a single number: its surface temperature. Hotter stars are bluer, cooler stars are redder, in a relation Wien wrote down in 1893.
The same laws of physics that govern a ball thrown across a room govern the orbits of planets, the lives of stars, and the structure of galaxies. With spectra, with the geometry of orbits, with the redshift of distant light, we read the universe from afar.
You will:
- Compute the mass of a binary star system from its observed orbital motion.
- Determine the temperature, composition, and motion of a star from its spectrum, with no other input.
- Use the cosmic distance ladder to measure distances from nearby stars out to the edge of the observable universe.
- Trace the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the present, using physics already in your toolbox.
What You Will Actually Understand
1. Celestial Mechanics
Orbits applied to the real Solar System. Kepler's laws of planetary motion. The two-body problem with reduced mass and the elliptic orbit. Orbital elements as the working description of any orbit. The three cosmic velocities (orbital, escape, solar escape) applied to bodies in the Solar System. Tides as a differential gravitational effect. The precession of the equinoxes.
2. The Solar System
Where we live, in detail. The planets and their moons. Small bodies: asteroids, comets, dwarf planets. The origin of the Solar System as a collapsing protoplanetary disc. Comparative planetology and the distinction between rocky and gas-giant planets. The Sun in the context of the system it dominates.
3. Stellar Spectroscopy
How to read a star without travelling to it. The spectrum of a hot object: Wien’s displacement law and the Stefan-Boltzmann law. Stellar effective temperature read off the peak of the spectrum. Discrete atomic energy levels and the spectral lines they produce. Absorption versus emission spectra. Spectral classification (OBAFGKM). The Doppler shift and radial velocity. The Balmer series of hydrogen as the spectroscopic reference.
4. Stars: HR Diagram, Evolution, and Compact Objects
The life and death of a star. The energy of the Sun: hydrogen fusion in the core. The main sequence. The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram as the diagnostic tool for stellar populations. Stellar evolution from molecular cloud to compact remnant. Binary systems. White dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes.
5. Galaxies and the Cosmic Distance Ladder
From the Sun’s neighbourhood to the edge of the observable universe. The Milky Way: spiral structure, the bulge, the halo. Types of galaxies: spiral, elliptical, irregular. The cosmic distance ladder: stellar parallax, Cepheid variables, Type Ia supernovae, redshift. Galactic clusters and the large-scale structure of the universe.
6. Cosmology and Observational Astronomy
The history of the universe, and the instruments we use to read it. The Big Bang model. The cosmic microwave background as the photon record of the early universe. Dark matter, inferred from galaxy rotation curves and gravitational lensing. Dark energy, inferred from accelerating cosmic expansion. Cosmic inflation as a leading idea about the very early universe. Telescopes across the spectrum: optical, radio, X-ray, gamma. Modern observatories: HST, JWST, LIGO and gravitational-wave astronomy.
The specific topics, and the depth given to each, may shift depending on class priorities and the dynamics of the cohort.
Schedule, Pricing & Enrollment
Formats: Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters.
Schedule, format, tuition, refund policy, and certificates apply to every Lyceum course. They live on the Physics Lyceum: High School overview.
To enroll, schedule a call. We confirm fit, prerequisites, and the right semester.
Part of the SoTS Physics Lyceum
Astronomy and Cosmology is one of four Modern Physics electives in the SoTS Physics Lyceum: a multi-year curriculum in Princeton, NJ. Students earning the Mastery in Classical and Modern Physics complete the six classical core courses plus any two of the four modern electives.
Classical core: Mechanics of motion. Mechanics of bodies and fluids. Waves and oscillations. Thermodynamics. Electricity and magnetism. Geometric optics.
Modern electives: Special Relativity. Quantum mechanics. Nuclear and particle physics. Astronomy and cosmology.
The Lyceum is built on the Deep Physics methodology.