Undergraduate Courses

Computational Space Physics: an elective 3 credit hours graduate (ISC 5415/AST 5760) and undergraduate (ISC 4933/PHY 4936) course.

If you are interested in modeling heavenly bodies, motion of stars in a few body system, evaporation of a molecular cloud, or perhaps stellar explosion, chances are you will need at least a few bits of knowledge provided in this series of lectures and computer labs!

This course offers introduction to numerical methods in the context of observational and theoretical astrophysics. The course covers interpolation, approximation, minimization and optimization, solution of linear systems of equations, random number generation, function integration, numerical differentiation, numerical integration of ordinary differential equations, stiff systems of ODEs, survey of methods for partial differential equations (Poisson equation, heat diffusion, hydrodynamics).

Prerequisites: MAC 2312, or the permission of the instructor; basic programming skills in Fortran, C, or C++.