Dear Students, We wish you an early welcome to Fort Burgwin and SMU-in-Taos. You have signed up for Astronomy (PHYS 1311) and we want to give you a little advance information. We are excited about working with you to learn about the cosmos, and we know you will enjoy the term at the Fort. The environment there is quite different from the main SMU campus. We are able to do things out there that are not practical here. The nights out at the Fort are DARK - you can really see the sky. If you have never looked through a telescope, this is your chance! All course details are provided on our website: http://www.physics.smu.edu/sekula/phys1311/ Important note about course textbooks - they are available now at the SMU Bookstore on campus. There are three of them - a textbook, a lecture-tutorial book, and a lab book. GET THEM HERE (or online from a bookseller) before leaving for Taos; **the lab book is ONLY available through the SMU bookstore, so plan accordingly**. Books WILL NOT be available at the Fort. If you arrive without them, you will have to arrange to purchase the books and have them shipped to you. A used textbook is OK, but do not bring a used lab book; the data pages you must hand in will be gone. Our class meets Mon.-Fri, 9am-noon. Each clear night, we will setup the new automated telescope that the University President funded for our course; this will allow us to view objects in the night sky, chat about Astronomy, and enjoy the wonder of the cosmos first-hand. We will start on Thursday, August 4. The course moves fast, but all August term courses do that. We will be doing more than a normal class-week's work in just one day! Expect to be very busy. We do an in-period lab exercise every morning, and you have to participate in at least one night viewing. Remember that stargazing is ONLY possible when the night is clear, and weather can prevent viewing on very short notice, so plan your attendance at a viewing night carefully (attending an earlier one is smarter than waiting until the end). Computers will be an important ingredient in our course, so please bring you mobile phones/tablets, laptops, and certainly a scientific calculator for homework, labs, and our final exam. Out at the Fort your professors are not far away. Join us for meals in the cafeteria, find us for office hours in the afternoons, and chat with us during events in the evening. You can come over to the student center or our quarters and talk, ask questions, and look through the telescope in the evening. We will have the telescope out every possible clear night. For going out at night, be sure you bring a good, bright flashlight. Large parts of the Fort property have a lot of trees and no outdoor lights. On a moonless night, you really cannot see anything; without a flashlight you are STUCK! Important: you are going to 7,400 feet elevation at the Fort - plan to take it easy for a few days after you arrive. Altitude has important effects on the human body, so make sure you hydrate frequently and don't over-exert yourself too quickly. Also remember that it is cool at the Fort at night, even in summer. You will want clothes suitable for nights in the 40's or 50's. Very cold nights can happen. If you are out at night wearing shorts and a T-shirt, you will be COLD! We are very excited to work with all of you and look forward to seeing you next week at the Taos campus. Sincerely, Profs. Jodi Cooley and Stephen Sekula Department of Physics, SMU