Galaxies and Cosmology

Algemeen

This course is taught by professor Jon Sundqvist and assisted by a number of TAs. In the year 2020-2021, it consisted of 9 lectures which lasted to the week after the Easter break. After a few weeks, you have to form groups and select a topic for a literature study. This essentially means you'll first read a review paper and then have to dig deeper. Finally, you give a presentation in your group on what you found out, which is graded for 6 out of the 20 points. The last few weeks are free of lectures to make room for these presentations. After the group project, you'll receive an individual assignment where you have to work out some exercises in detail and discuss them. This too is marked for 6 grades. At last, the exam is for the remaining 8 grades and is fairly surface level. In a 15 minute oral exam, the professor asks you to briefly explain some broad concepts. You do not need to know any derivations for this.

In 2020-2021, the professor put an overview on Toledo of many, many examples of questions he may ask. The vast majority of questions he ended up asking on the exams came from this list. You may find it here: Media:Study questions oral exam.pdf

In this course, you'll mostly study using the slides and maybe the lecture recordings (assuming the professor will keep using those), as well as some short notes provided by the professor for particular chapters. Most of the content is based on the book by Schneider: Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology (2015), however you do not need to buy this book. Firstly, it is extremely extensive and you'll rarely need such a deep dive. Secondly, and more importantly, a pdf version of this book is available online, including through the KUL's Limo Libis system.