Primary textbook
The Fundamentals of Stellar Astrophysics, by George W. Collins (originally published by WH Freeman in 1989; revised online edition published 2003). Available in full online at ADS, but the PDF version occasionally contains garbled mathematics. See also more about it at other sites such as HOLLIS, Amazon, and Google Books.
HERE is a link to a list of example topics for the final project/paper assignment in this course.
HERE is a link to some additional guidance about the written and oral parts of the final project.Useful data files
- HERE is an ASCII data table giving some fundamental properties of stars and brown dwarfs along the zero-age main sequence. Sources for model data: (1) Ekstrom for M > 0.75 solar mass stars (ZAMS, non-rotating, Z=0.014). (2) Girardi for stars between 0.15 and 0.75 solar masses (ZAMS, Z=0.02). (3) Baraffe for M < 0.11 solar mass brown dwarf and planet models (quasi-ZAMS: age = 500 Myr).
- HERE is an ASCII data table giving various numerical constants relevant to polytropes and the Lane-Emden equations as a function of polytropic index n.
Other online books and lecture notes
Dr. Onno Pols from Utrecht wrote an excellent set of textbook-level notes on stellar interiors (i.e., stellar structure, thermodynamics, and nuclear fusion) and stellar evolution. Local copies of the notes are provided here, grouped into 5 PDF files (each containing more than one chapter):
5. Energy Transport in Stellar Interiors
6. Nuclear Processes in Stars12. Pre-Supernova Evolution of Massive Stars
13. Stellar Explosions and Remnants of Massive StarsOther online lecture notes on stellar interiors include:
- CU's own Phil Armitage taught ASTR-5700 back in 2002, and still has his lecture notes online. He also posted a huge review of star formation and pre-main-sequence evolution to the arXiv in 2015.
- Michigan State's Ed Brown wrote up lecture notes on stellar physics and posted them as a github repo (on the growing Open Astrophysics Bookshelf) and as a PDF on his own web page.
Stellar oscillations: For more information than given in class, see a comprehensive (276-page) set of lecture notes by Jorgen Christensen-Dalsgaard. See also a two-part review of adiabatic and non-adiabatic pulsations, on arXiv.
Radiative transfer: Rob Rutten created an extensive set of lecture notes on radiative transfer in stellar atmospheres (with a bit of an emphasis on the Non-LTE upper layers most relevant to the solar chromosphere). HERE is a link to Rutten's external web page, which contains the full set of PDF notes (275 pages) and many other useful files.
Also, Dr. J. B. Tatum posted many of his lecture notes on stellar atmospheres and radiative transfer. I've archived his 11 chapters here:
1. Definitions of and Relations between Quantities used in Radiation Theory
2. Blackbody Radiation
3. The Exponential Integral Function
4. Flux, Specific Intensity and other Astrophysical Terms
5. Absorption, Scattering, Extinction and the Equation of Transfer
6. Limb Darkening
7. Atomic Spectroscopy
8. Boltzmann's and Saha's Equations
9. Oscillator Strengths and Related Topics
10. Line Profiles
11. Curve of GrowthThe Sun: Koskinen and Vainio wrote up their lecture notes on solar physics ("from the core to the heliopause"). These notes go a bit further into the 'practical' applications of helioseismology and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) than other purely astronomical sources. HERE is a local copy of these notes in a single (188-page) PDF file.