Creating a Short Textbook with Accompanying Jupyter Notebooks for a Non-Calculus-Based Astrophysics Course

“Stellar and Galactic Astrophysics” is the culminating course in Marietta College’s astronomy minor. The class does not have a calculus prerequisite because such a requirement would make the astronomy minor inaccessible to non-science majors with a significant interest in astronomy.

Not using calculus in class creates challenges in finding a suitable textbook. Although numerous astronomy/astrophysics texts exist at both the introductory and the intermediate/advanced level, I have not found a good option for the class as I teach it. Some of the more-math-intensive introductory books come close, but they do not delve deeply into the aspects of stellar astrophysics that form a sizable portion of the course. Intermediate/advanced books rely heavily on calculus and are dense, encyclopedic, and unreadable for this student population.

During a recent sabbatical, I created a draft of a short textbook covering stellar atmospheres, stellar energy production, and stellar interiors utilizing math at a level appropriate for the course. Furthermore, I created a series of roughly two dozen jupyter notebooks to accompany the text. The notebooks are scaffolded so that students learn to read and understand the code at the same time they are learning astrophysics. In my presentation, I will describe these materials in more detail and discuss my experiences using them earlier this semester.