Prof. Chris Impey has just been an amazing Teacher to begin the journey of Astronomy. Courses are well designed and quite Interesting.

A wonderful course that takes you on a roller coaster ride of the astronomy by different aspects of physics, chemistry and biology.

Complete and easy to digest information. This course has everything for those starting up in Astronomy.

I love this class and I am learn a lot about the earth and stars. ects thank you mandy evans

Amazing course! It changed the way I think about the subject.

There should be some physical/software based assignments too.

Teaching methodology was great and content is equally great.

Great course, with exceptional material and good dynamics.

Muy interesante y clarificador. Muchas gracias profesor

A great course. Than you for making it.

Its Amazing! Oh my god.

Excelent course!

excelent course

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This course is a good introduction to astronomy for someone with no knowledge in the subject or physics/maths. As someone with a lot of experience in STEM however, it would've been nice to see the mathematics behind all the theories in some detail, though I understand that this would not have been a preference for everyone studying this course.

As the course is rather old at the time of writing, some of the material seems slightly outdated, but I understand that efforts have been made to make sure that the information is relevant to astronomy today.

Nevertheless, it provides a basic understanding of a broad range of topics in this subject. I enjoyed that the writing assignments as they helped me understand the course material a lot better.

It was an interesting course. What I would like to see is a course offered that is a bit more intensive. Perhaps with a bot of mathematics involved. What I see offered is entry level survey courses that are quite easy and then advanced courses that require knowledge of second or third year mathematics. A course or a certificate (4-5 courses) that bridges the gap between the two would be a benefit. Thank you

It was interesting and gives you knowledge at a large extent, the only thing lacking is a role of mathematics in this course.

Good one. Detailed.

Too much of video clips from television etc. Can avoid those.

it would help if the course have subs in spanish

Entertaining, but very basic. Suits a beginner with very little knowledge of physics.

This course is bad!

I had come upto week 4. While Chris Impey is knowledgeable and good, the course structure is very poor and leaves a lot to be desired. I would venture to make some suggestions:

a. Restrict each video to a max of 7 minutes. More than that makes one sleepy.

b. Reduce the number of videos in each module to a max of say 6.

c. Instead of having Chris expound it like an audio reading, please include some slides, pictures,tables so that the matter to be learnt becomes self evident and Chris doesn't have to speak so much. A good example is the Coursera "The Global Financial Crisis", which I am also doing currently.

d. If you feel all the material in this course has to be studied, then to achieve the objectives in (a) and (b) above, divide this course into two parts, Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space - part I & II.

e. The written assignments are very simple and do not require any mental resources other than memory. Can you make the questions more challenging? For example, in Telescopes (Assignment 2), can you not ask a question like "In addition to Atacama, Chile, using Google earth, which other parts of the globe may be suitable for installation of ground based telescopes?" or "To obviate the blurring effect of the atmosphere, discuss the possibility of high altitude balloon based telescopes?" or "What do you feel about the fact that since today's mobile phones have high computing ability, their components can be used to make a low-cost space based interferometric telescopes?"

Kudos to Chris and his team! On the whole, knowledge wise, this is a good course.

I can't have my certirficate and already I pay for it!

This was a very interesting and well-presented course. I found all the content fascinating and much of the information was new to me. I enjoyed the diversity in the tools and methods, from Monty Python to music and cartoons. I found that once I got started I could not stop. I really enjoyed the section about life. I had taken an online course about Extremophiles at Edinburgh with Coursera but I was very interested in the tree of life based on DNA. It made sense and it showed how human evolution was perhaps more precarious than we imagined. Other life forms may be carbon-based given the number of combinations of molecules possible with carbon but it doesn't follow that the form would be similar to ours.

I enjoyed learning about the new methods being used to construct telescopes and especially the really innovative way that ground based telescopes can use secondary mirrors (Adaptive Optics) to compensate for atmospheric conditions, thereby reducing cost by reducing the need for orbital telescopes. It was exciting to hear that gravitational waves have now been discovered and to learn how dark matter and dark energy affect the behavior of our universe. I liked the way that Chris got us through the subject matter without getting too deep into second level or third level calculus. We learned a little about string theory as well as Gravity and Space-Time. Also, the exciting discovery of the Higgs Bosun particle and field.

I have read some of Issac Asimov's non-fiction books on the table of elements and biochemistry and I was happy to see the table of elements very well explained here too. I found the week on exoplanets really exciting and have always thought that there must be a huge number of planets out there and different forms of life also. I'm not sure how many would occupy the same short time line that we are on, I expect not many but with the numbers of planets that appear to be habitable it might be possible.

Black holes are amazing objects. It would be nice to know more about them and how dark matter and dark energy factor into the equation. I vaguely remember that Fred Hoyle had proposed a steady state theory and I think that would be interesting to read about. The infinite expansion of the universe due to dark energy was news to me and I find this quite amazing. How do we explain the concept of infinity. Are we all on a huge mobius strip? I like the simplicity of Fermi's question: Where are they? I think they are out there somewhere but I suspect that they are quite different to us. Perhaps at the next stage of our life, if there is one, perhaps we can take a flight through the universe(s) in a different form at any speed we want. Wouldn't that be great?

As a general feedback, first I would ask you to be patient with my lousy English and expecting that you understand what I am trying to express, here it is:

The course is amazing!

I came with the expectation to learn a little bit about Time and Space and, in the end, I was caught by surprise that you have gone far beyond it.

Starting with “The Scientific Method”, going all the way thru “Cosmology” and finalizing with questions about the “Next steps”, this was an incredible and, more importantly, useful journey to me.

I understand and value very much the work involved on providing such comprehensive material, I gladly (most of the time) read, listened, watched, participated in most of them. The course, to me, took 63 days with an average of 6-12 hours a day, monday to monday; besides your material, which I mostly saved, I look for some extra information, mainly on Wikipedia and some other educational sites, I also made a bunch of notes, summaries and found extra references. My ‘final’ document has almost 900 pages in 135 MB. I thought it would be nice to share. Your efforts were not in vain.

One of the interesting extra findings was to learn about “Science for Monks” program. It caught my attention (for several days) for many reasons, one of them is that eastern people do not, in general, try to scientifically explain the nature, the search is much more related to a balance of the self and the nature as it is presented, in my (semi-)oriental point of view. A sort of ‘equilibrium’, the same as planets and atoms and nature as a whole try to reach.

Another reflection was about their martial art, kung fu, and how it is balanced with their spiritual matters and believes. As half japanese and with some Judo background, it took me a while to understand the balance between these two things, supported from what you are teaching in terms of Physics and, in the end, try to make a reasonable sense in my mind.

I believe things are somehow connected and, in the end, seek for balance.

Just to close the above finding, the explanation I gave to myself is that martial art could be understood as “Philosophy in moviment” and being so, it can be explained in terms of Physics. I am ok with that. By the way, as brazilian, shamefully, I suck at soccer too...

I can not thank you enough for making available so much knowledge and, mainly, ‘forcing’ me reflect on many things in several different ways. But, in the end, your guidance made me more curious and inspired to learn even more.

The course is amazing.

Hoping this feedback was ok, I sincerely hope you the best,

Thank you

This is a fantastic introduction to astronomy by Dr. Impey, indeed it is so much more. You will survey topics like the history of science and star gazing, telescopes and instrumentation, planets and the sun, distant galaxies, cosmology and the big bang, and even astrobiology. The course doesn’t assume a lot of science, and math use is practically non-existent, though knowledge of freshman/AP physics and chemistry will help you understand the contents deeper (though these subjects are reviwed). In fact, by the end of the course you will be acquainted with the frontiers of physical sciences and have a conceptual understanding of some cutting edge results, so in that sense you will get a broad overview of modern physics as well.

Throughout, Dr. Impey mixes animation and multimedia to help elucidate concepts and motivate material. Assessments include multiple choice quizzes and essays that have you write out basics of that week’s content. The professor also hosts a weekly Q&A on stream so you ask questions in a live format similar to seeing him in office hours.

Things I came away with by the end of the course include why we have seasons, why we need space telescopes like Hubble, what makes planets like mars and exoplanets hospitable, how stars die and what black holes are, how we know the universe expands, and even some basic geology and nuclear physics. Great place to start learning astronomy, or even science more broadly.