Getting in the Cosmological Mood

• historical context
• Sky map basics: our Milky Way Galaxy seen locally from here and here
  all-sky optical Milky Way
  Galactic Coordinates, with constellations: left image shows observer-centered Galactic latitude l, longitude b
  sky view of Galactic latitude and longitude
  optical and near infrared (unobscured Galactic stars) in these coordinates
• Dreyer's New General Catalogue (NGC)
  zone of avoidance and interstellar dust
• Cepheid variable stars: period-luminosity relation discovered Leavitt & Pickering (1912) and modern (Madore & Freedman (1991))
• Hubble (the man) discovers a cepheid in M31
• Hubble (the telescope): Cephieds in M100
  the recordholder: NGC 4603
• cosmological observables

Overview of Observational Cosmology: Zeroth Order Picture

• Cosmography: large-scale matter distribution
• actual data: 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey
  • survey geometry
  • clustering: all galaxies
• actual data: Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  • 2-D slices: all galaxies
  • 2-D slices: luminous red galaxies
  • 2-D slices: quasars
  • video: flythrough
• cosmological principle
• Cosmic kinematics: galaxy motions
  • a collection of spectra
  • Edwin Hubble's discovery paper (Hubble 1929)
  • implications