What will the final exam cover? It'll be cumulative, covering the entire course. This includes everything I wrote on the blackboard, and everything in Chapters 1-6, 7.6 to 7.9 (pp. 173-185), and 18-30 of Universe, 5th ed., by Kaufmann and Freedman, as well as the notes on Cosmology and Active Galactic Nuclei.

Although there will be some emphasis of material presented later in the course, by far the best two places to study for this exam will be the solutions for Mid-Term Exams 1 and 2, especially Mid-term 2. I was dismayed by how many people had forgotten that M dwarfs are by far the most common stars in the Universe, for example: a normal stellar population has a mass-to-light ratio of 10, remember?

Remember also that nearly all extrasolar planets found so far were detected spectroscopically, by periodic Doppler shifting of their spectral lines. (Just writing "the wobble" doesn't describe this adequately: it could mean astrometric detections, which have had the most notorious record for false detections.) Gravitational lensing is the most promising method for extrasolar terrestrial planet detection; it's also a method we could conceivably do with the SARA telescope. Remember also the various types of extrasolar planets so far discovered: hot Jupiters, eccentric Jupiters, classical Jupiters, and pulsar planets, but not terrestrial planets, unless you specifically mention pulsar planets. Anything around a pulsar may be as massive as Earth, but is probably not too similar!

Be able to reproduce the following sketches, and explain what they mean:

• Explain why the Earth has seasons (as do the other planets).
• Why the Moon has phases, and what times of night the Moon, at different phases, rises and sets.
• A Mercator-projection (flat, with right ascension depicted as vertical lines) map of the ecliptic, plotted in equatorial coordinates, and fully annotated.
• The Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram, including the main sequence and where giants, supergiants, and white dwarfs are.
• A plot of the evolution of a 1 solar mass star, across the H-R diagram.
• A schematic rotation curve of the Milky Way or most other galaxies, explaining the two surprises (the central object and the massive, invisible halo at least 10 times more massive than what we can see of the galaxy).
• A detailed, fully annotated side view of the Milky Way Galaxy (the top view, with the spiral arm layout, is controversial), labeling the disk, plane, bulge, center, halo, globular clusters, and which stellar populations can be found in all of them, as well as the radius from the center to the Sun and from the center to the visible edge.
• Give Hubble's Law, and sketch and explain what the balloon demo showed: why the cosmological redshift indicates an expansion of space itself, and not an explosion into space as with a nova or supernova.

Rework the simpler homework problems, too: you should have solutions to everything now. Be able to do the following calculations (and do bring a calculator):

• Scientific notation, units conversions, and proportions;
• Finding angular diameters with simple trigonometry, and now, applying them to all types of situations, such as finding galaxy diameters, given their apparent diameters and their distances;
• Wien's law, and properties of blackbodies (e.g., Where in the spectrum is the maximum output of the 3 K cosmic background radiation, which has a blackbody spectrum? It's about 1 millimeter, in the microwave part of the spectum);
• Calculating magnitudes, including absolute magnitudes and distances;
• Determine orbital velocities and escape velocities, and use Kepler's Third Law in its various forms;
• Derive the Schwarzschild radius, by setting the escape velocity equal to c;
• Your own sensible version of the Drake equation. It need not be identical to mine or anyone else's, but it must carefully and thoughtfully explain your estimates.

Be sure to read the chapters again thorougly. Take notes when you read. Practice the above calculations, too: one can't learn much mathematics just by reading it, one must pick up a pencil and work the problems oneself. If you do the readings and work the problems, you should be OK. This will be a closed-book, closed-notes, open-mind exam, just like the Mid-Term Exams.

As far as memorizing constants and formulae goes, it'll be much like Mid-term Exam 2: don't memorize constants, they'll either be given or will be derivable from the information given. Most formulae should also be derivable; e.g., you should remember that blackbodies get bluer as they get hotter, and so, expressed quantitatively, this is Wien's law.