Friday, August 06, 2010

Free Astrophysics & Astronomy Class Lectures From Yale University

Want to know what I've been doing with my time these days? I've been watching this Astrophysics & Astronomy class made available on Youtube via Yale University. After doing a simple search on youtube.com/edu of "Astrophysics," I found this fantastic educational video series. The series boasts a total of 24 video lectures, all for free.

The class is titled "Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics" and is taught by Professor Charles Bailyn (he's a great professor). I've been watching 1 class per day, sometimes 2, depending on my mood. It's a great resource for astronomy lovers that want to just sit and chill, while watching some educational astro videos from a superb university.

Here is the introduction video to the astrophysics & astronomy course. There's no worksheets to work through or anything like that. This is just a series of class lectures from Yale that have been filmed so anybody can give them a view for free. That way, people that don't have the cash for college (like me) can pretend to sit in class and get a free education in the comfort of there own home.



Here is the webpage on Yale's website with all of the class videos and materials for the astrophysics & astronomy course. However, below, I have the first 5 videos of the course via youtube. For some, the videos on Youtube might be easier to watch than the one's on Yale's website. They were for me because my computer sucks.

1) Intoduction (video above)
2) Planetary Orbits
3) Our Solar System and the Pluto Problem
4) Discovering Exoplanets: Hot Jupiters
5) Planetary Transits

Also, if you have a really slow connection and can't watch these videos, but wish you could; go to this page on Yale's site, click on the lecture you want and you will notice they offer transcripts and mp3 downloads of the lectures for free as well. Happy learning everyone!