Welcome!

Introductions

Preview: The Big Picture

Galaxies: Building Blocks of the Universe

• The Milky Way: optical view
• Milky Way Center:
  stellar orbits around a supermassive unseen object
• spiral galaxies, their origin, and dark matter

Black Holes

• at the heart of the Virgo cluster: M87 Galaxy and jet
• Zoom in with Event Horizon Telescope: picture of a black hole!
• ubiquity of active galactic nuclei
• galaxy growth linked to black hole growth!?

Cosmology: Science on the Grandest Scale

• Hubble--the man and the expansion of the universe
• the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and Extreme Deep Field
• The Big Bang
• evidence for dark energy
  deep and prizeworthy new questions
• particle dark matter and the early universe:
  evidence, candidates, direct searches
• cosmic microwave background
• big bang nucleosynthesis
• formation of the cosmic structures and the first stars

Business: Course Syllabus