PHYS1160

INTRODUCTION TO ASTRONOMY

School of Physics

Faculty of Science

Term 3, 2024

Assessment Information

This document is the definitive source for information about the assessments for PHYS1160. It supersedes any information on the Moodle site, in videos, etc.

If you need clarification of anything here, please first check the Frequently Asked Questions, Course Forum, and Discord Server on the Moodle site.

Note that all specific due dates are in the Course Outline. All assessments are submitted on Moodle.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

You may use Artificial Intelligence software such as ChatGPT to assist you with the short report and written

assessment, without attribution (i.e., you don’t need to indicate in your report that you have used this

software). However, please do not use this as a substitute for learning the material, since otherwise you will gain little from doing the course. If your report looks like a bunch of paragraphs from ChatGPT with little

coherent narrative, it is unlikely to receive a good mark.

What sort of references are appropriate?

The short report and written assessments require you to list references for the information you include.

Ideally, these references would be to scholarly articles in journals such as The Astrophysical Journal, Nature,

Science, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, or Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical

Society. You can search for such articles using the NASA database athttps://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/. Simple searches with Google tend to find more popular articles and Wikipedia entries, which can be useful to get

you started, but these aren’t primary sources – including some of them is OK, but it is a red flag if all your references come from the first page of a Google search.

When should I use a reference?

Basically, anytime you are making what appears to be a factual statement you should include a reference to

where the information came from, e.g., “The Milky Way Galaxy is 30 kpc in diameter and our Sun is 9 kpc from the centre (Lindhoven and Smith, 2018)”, and in your reference list at the end:

Lindhoven, A. B, Smith, X. Y., 2018, ApJ, 123, 23-35, doi:10.1122/5.66334.

You can also use the UNSW guide to how to cite using the Harvard referencing method: https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/how-do-i-cite.

Not including references to a short sentence added as a direct quotation, or in support of a factual statement paraphrased from a larger text is considered plagiarism and will be investigated further.

Late submission policy

Students who submit any of their assessments late (except the quizzes, which cannot be attempted after the due time) will receive a penalty of 5%/day late.

Submissions 5+ days late (120 hours past the deadline) will not be marked.

Extensions

Course staff do not approve extensions, these are only available through the formal special consideration processhttps://specialconsideration.unsw.edu.au/.

If you are having problems getting the quizzes or assignments completed due to some factor please reach out to course staff at the time as we may be able to help. Do not wait until the end of term.

Summary of assessment and alignment to learning outcomes

Quizzes

Testing your understanding is a vital component to learning. It helps you gauge what you have learned and  where there are gaps in your knowledge. In most weeks, you will have a quiz to complete on Moodle. These quizzes are comprised of multiple-choice questions that will test your conceptual understanding of the material.

The quizzes are worth 10% of the final grade of the course. If there is any discrepancy between percentages and deadlines between this document and the Course Outline, then the Course Outline takes precedence.

Short report

The short report has been designed to help you develop skills, learn the course material, and prepare you for the written assessment later in the term.

You will develop your communication and research skills as you respond to given stimuli.

There is no specific format for the short report. The length (maximum allowed word count) of the short

report is given below. You should write concisely and ensure you satisfy the rubric criteria (outlined below).  You may include figures, where necessary, and you must include appropriate referencing. The usual rules on attribution and plagiarism apply to these short reports. If you plagiarise, the procedures that apply are outlined inUNSW’s Plagiarism Policy(https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/plagiarism).

You can submit the report as Word DOCX file, PDF (with readable text, not embedded in images), OpenOffice ODT, or PowerPoint PPTX.

The short report is due 11:59 PM AEST/AEDT FRIDAY in week 4. The short report is worth 25% of the final  grade of the course. If there is any discrepancy between percentages and deadlines between this document and the Course Outline, then the Course Outline takes precedence.

The details for the short report are below:

Short report: Choose ONE (1) of the following:

1)  Debunking misconceptions and pseudoscience

Task

You are expected to research the science relevant to climate change. You are to answer the question: Why are misconceptions about climate change so prominent, what evidence is there for climate change, and what can be done about it?

Specific details

Format:

Individual (no group work)

Written (no video, audio, podcasts, etc.)

Length:

Up to 3000 words

There is no minimum limit because this is based on the assessment style. that you choose. You must cover a minimum amount of content as per the rubrics (below).

There is a strict upper word limit (as shown by Word/Adobe PDF, includes references, title, figure captions, etc).

Submissions outside of this limit will lose marks as outlined in the rubric.

Style.

Any style. that you wish, within reason.

All referencing must be done using Harvard reference style.

You can submit the assessment as a Word DOCX file, PDF (with readable text, not embedded in images), OpenOffice ODT, or PowerPoint PPTX.

Content

Your assessment must:

• (Briefly) Describe common climate change misconceptions.

• Describe evidence for climate change, with specific reference to solar variability and the impact (if any) that solar variability has on climate.

• Explain how climate change is scientifically linked to a particular event/occurrence that has happened in a region of your choice (e.g., where you currently live, your hometown, etc.). Alternatively, you may pick one from the list below:

o Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching (https://theconversation.com/the-great-barrier-reef-faces-a-mixed-future-in-acidifying-oceans-54884)

o 2009 Victorian and South Australian bushfires and heatwaves (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901114000999)

o Increased droughts across Australia (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/2019/)

o 2011 loss of Western Australia’s kelp forests (https://theconversation.com/a-marine-heatwave-has-wiped-out-a-swathe-of-was-undersea-kelp-forest-62042)

o 2019 bitumen melting in NSW (https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/roads-melt-as-temperatures-break-records-across-nsw-20190117-p50s0e.html)

• Explain one or more possible scientific and/or engineering solutions to climate change.

• Include at least one properly referenced recent relevant fact/publication/result dating from January 2022.

• Use appropriate referencing in Harvard style.

• Not include plagiarised content (see below).

2) Researching new telescopes and missions

Task

You are expected to choose a new telescope or mission that began collecting data in the last 5 years (that means that the mission/telescope could have launched more than 5 years ago but started collecting data in the last 5 years).

Specific details

Format:

Individual (no group work)

Written (no video, audio, podcasts, etc.)

Length:

Up to 3000 words

There is no minimum limit because this is based on the assessment style. that you choose. You must cover a minimum amount of content as per the rubrics (below).

There is a strict upper word limit (as shown by Word/Adobe PDF, includes references, title, figure captions, etc).

Submissions outside of this limit will lose marks as outlined in the rubric.

Style.

Any style. that you wish, within reason.

All referencing must be done using Harvard reference style.

You can submit the assessment as a Word DOCX file, PDF (with readable text, not embedded in images), OpenOffice ODT, or PowerPoint PPTX.

Content

Your assessment must:

• Describe the background scientific information that places the reason for the mission or telescope into context.

o What is the gap in knowledge that the mission/telescope was designed to cover?

• Explain the scientific aims of the mission/telescope, and how they will be answered (this is related to the first point; the mission/telescope may not completely fill the gap in current knowledge!)

• Summarise the data that will be gathered by mission/telescope, or the data that has already been collected.

• Briefly explain how this contributes to current scientific knowledge.

• Include at least one properly referenced recent relevant fact/publication/result dating from January 2022.

• Use appropriate referencing in Harvard style.

• Not include plagiarised content (see below).