Principles of Astronomy

Frequently Asked Questions - Answered!

This webpage should answer most questions but, if you need more information, feel free to email Dr Jamie Love.

I want to work at my own pace. Must I follow a schedule?

Not really.
I originally wrote this course as a one year program that begins in January and follows the night sky as it moves throughout the year. Many folks asked that I tweak the lessons a bit in order to make them relevant year round. That I have done. You can start the lessons anytime of year but understand that some of the objects will not be in the positions I suggest unless you are viewing them during that "titled month".

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I live in the Southern Hemisphere. Would I find this course useful?

Yes, I think you would.
Students will learn how to identify most of the bright stars and obvious constellations as seen from the Northern Hemisphere but there is a lot of "southern exposure" in the course. There's also a lesson about the night sky as seen from the South Pole. The course is "northern biased" but many (about 10%) of my students are in the Southern Hemisphere. The sky is "upside down" but they seem to get used to it.
There are many wonderful sights in the night sky as seen from the far south including our nearest neighbor (Alpha Centauri), nearest galaxies (Magellanic Clouds) and many other interesting objects!
And, of course, the fundamentals of Astronomy - the physics - are the same.

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Who is the author/teacher and what are his credentials?

Dr Jamie Love created Principles of Astronomy.

Over the years Jamie has taught a wide variety of science subjects (from astronomy to zoology) to a wide variety of students (from thirteen-year-olds to thirty-somethings). Dr Love earned his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Louisiana State University Medical Center (New Orleans).
In 1990 he moved to Scotland - a part of The United Kingdom. (The best part! ) The UK is home to the oldest, biggest and most distinguished distance-learning university in the world - The Open University. Jamie spent several years studying its methods while working towards his diploma in Information Technology through The Open University. He also earned an MBA by distance learning (from Heriot-Watt University).
Jamie knows first hand the difficulties one encounters studying alone.

Dr Love started Merlin Science in 1995 - teaching chemistry over the Internet. The following year he published Principles of Alchemy, his first self-paced, self-learning "hypertextbook". It was very well received and has become particularly popular among home schoolers.
Being an amateur astronomer, web master and expert in distance learning, Jamie began delivering astronomy courses over the Internet in 1997 as part of Science Explained. Thousands of eager students visited his website, asking questions about astronomy and getting answers. Several professional astronomers visited the website and congratulated him on his work and encouraged him to create a complete and structured course. With curious students asking plenty of questions and professional astronomers helping him, Dr Love was able to create a first class astronomy hypertextbook that is both scientifically correct and educational.

In 1998 Dr Love joined the Department of Life Sciences at Napier University (Edinburgh) teaching a variety of subjects and developing the department's flexible (distant) learning modules. In that role Dr Love has acted as editor and coordinator of several distance learning books - teaching genetics, microbiology, immunology and biotechnology.
In June of 2000 Napier University awarded Dr Love the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. This certificate is awarded to those who complete a series of classes, workshops, peer review and an educational project. Jamie chose as his project to create a web-based, self-learning minicourse in evolution.
Dr Love is an Adjunct Associate Professor (part-time) with the University of Maryland University College. (BUT please note that Merlin Science is in no way associated with University of Maryland University College.) Via distance learning he teaches "Selection and Evaluation of Biotechnology Projects" to students working towards a Master of Science in Technology Management.

When he is relaxing, Jamie (aka Merlin) enjoys bird watching, fossil collecting, and stargazing.

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Tell me more about the exams.

Each quarter (12 lessons) ends with two self-evaluation exams. Each exam is composed of 20 questions answered by multiple choice - a total of 160 questions for the entire course. Jamie wrote the three wrong choices to represent common errors or misunderstandings that the student might have. That makes the choices harder but it also means a wrong answer, with the feedback provided, is a learning experience. The only drawback of this immediate feedback is that the student is then free to change the answer. However, that is not the point. Jamie does not write exams that are meant to merely generate a score - they are meant to help the student. Exams without feedback are easy for teachers to grade but provide no learning for students. Dr Love believes that learning continues into the tests.

After completeing the exam, the student submits it and the computer generates a "virtual page" that shows the grade and scores each answer as "Right" or "Wrong". The student can jot down which ones were wrong and close the "virtual page". The exam will have been reloaded so all the previous answers have been wiped away. At this point the student has two options - take the entire exam all over again (choosing all 20 responses) or click the web browser's "Back Button" to reload all the previous answers from earlier, including the wrong ones, and change them. Regardless of which method used, the student is given plenty of opportunities to correct errors and submit a "perfect" test. (Please note that the "virtual page" does not print from most web browsers because it is not "seen" by the printer. It is not a real web page because it is generated "on the fly".)

Of course, the student is on the "honor system" and the exams are meant to encourage the student to continue while providing some incentive to achieve a perfect score. Note : students can take the exams as many times as they like but there is no way to save answers. That is, once you turn off the web browser the answers are gone forever. Dr Love experimented with ways to save these exams on the hard disk but it is difficult to get one method that to work across all platforms (PCs and Macs) correctly and consistently. Also, most folks do not like the idea of software writing on the disk and it tends to set off the virus alerts!

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Exactly what do I get when I buy Principles of Astronomy?

You get a complete self-paced, self-learning astronomy course delivered to your computer over the Internet. This hypertextbook is a series of webpages stored on your hard disk. That means Principles of Astronomy is "platform independent" - it will run on any computer that has a web browser. It also means you don't have to be constantly hooked up to the Internet to learn astronomy!
This course has been designed to teach astronomy to anyone with a reading level above eighth grade.