Minor in Astronomy and Astrophysics

The Minor in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Department of Physical Sciences, Independent University, Bangladesh, offers students a rare and transformative opportunity to explore the cosmos through a rigorous yet accessible 15-credit program open to any student with a background in the natural sciences and mathematics. Anchored by two mandatory core courses, Introduction to Astronomy (AST 201) and Introduction to Astrophysics (AST 301), and complemented by a rich menu of electives spanning planetary systems, stellar evolution, galaxies, radio astronomy, cosmology, and relativity, this minor equips curious minds with the conceptual and observational tools to grapple with the universe’s grandest questions. Designed to be completed within five semesters, it seamlessly complements majors in physics, mathematics, engineering, and computer science, inviting students from across disciplines to situate their expertise within the largest possible context: the universe itself.

The curriculum of this minor, approved by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of Bangladesh, can be found in Page 18 of this document.

Astrophysics courses

AST 201: Introduction to Astronomy

Every civilization that has ever looked up has asked the same questions: What is out there, and how do we know? AST 201 begins with that ancient impulse and transforms it into rigorous, modern science. This is not a course about inherited answers — it is a course about the methods of knowing: how humanity learned to read light, build instruments of extraordinary precision, and wrest meaning from the faint signals arriving from billions of light-years away. It is the essential first step for any student who wishes to understand the universe on its own terms.

The syllabus spans the full observational pipeline of modern astronomy. Students begin with the history of the field — from Copernicus and Galileo through the rise of multi-wavelength astronomy — before moving into the physics of light, astronomical coordinate systems, and statistical uncertainty. The course then advances through telescope optics and design, the interaction of matter and radiation, and the technology of modern detectors including CCDs and infrared arrays. It concludes with hands-on digital image processing: bias correction, flat-fielding, mosaicing, and aperture photometry. By the end, students possess the foundational observational literacy that every subsequent course in the Minor builds upon.

Course website: https://cassa.site/abekta/courses/ast201/

AST 301: Introduction to Astrophysics

If AST 201 taught you how we look, AST 301 teaches you what we see — and what it means. This is the course where observation meets theory, where the data collected by telescopes is confronted with the deepest physical laws we know. It is a course about the universe as a whole: its origin, its architecture, its contents, and its fate. More than any other course in the Minor, AST 301 asks the questions that have always haunted human consciousness — where did everything come from, and where is it going?

The syllabus traces the full arc of modern cosmology and large-scale astrophysics. Students begin with the foundational observational evidence — Olbers’ paradox, the recession of galaxies, the abundance of helium, and the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background — before building up the standard model of cosmology through the Friedmann-Lemaître equations, the thermal history of the universe, and primordial nucleosynthesis. The course then turns to structure: how galaxies and dark matter halos form and evolve from quantum fluctuations seeded in the early universe. It concludes with the 21-cm hydrogen spin-flip line — a window into the cosmic web that defines the frontier of modern radio astrophysics.

Course website: https://cassa.site/abekta/courses/ast301/

AST 401: Planets and Planetary Systems

Of all the questions astronomy raises, none cuts closer to the human condition than this: are we alone? AST 401 takes that question with full scientific seriousness. It is a course about our cosmic neighbourhood and its countless counterparts across the Galaxy — about how worlds are born from dust, how they evolve over billions of years, and whether the conditions that gave rise to life on Earth might exist elsewhere. It is, ultimately, a course about the meaning of our own existence in an immense and largely unknown universe.

The syllabus moves from the formation of planetary systems — tracing the journey from protoplanetary disk to planetesimals to fully formed worlds — through an in-depth survey of our own solar system and its planets, their interiors, surfaces, and atmospheres. Students then master the five methods of exoplanet detection — radial velocity, transit, direct imaging, microlensing, and astrometry — before surveying the extraordinary diversity of known exoplanets, from lava worlds to ocean super-Earths. The course culminates in astrobiology: the origin and early evolution of life, habitable environments within our solar system including Titan and Europa, and the broader scientific framework for searching for life beyond Earth.

Course website: https://cassa.site/abekta/courses/ast401/

AST 402: Stars and Interstellar Medium

Every atom of carbon in your body was forged in the core of a dying star. AST 402 is the course that makes that statement not poetry but physics. Stars are the universe’s engines — the sites where matter is transformed, where energy is liberated, where the chemical elements that constitute life are manufactured and dispersed. To understand stars is to understand our own origin at the most fundamental level. This course confronts that profound truth through the full machinery of modern astrophysics.

The syllabus begins with binary star dynamics and stellar classification — the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, spectral types, the Boltzmann and Saha equations — before descending into stellar interiors: hydrostatic equilibrium, nuclear timescales, quantum tunneling, nucleosynthesis, and radiative transfer. A dedicated treatment of the Sun anchors the theory in our nearest star, covering its interior, atmosphere, corona, solar wind, and magnetic activity cycle. The course then expands outward into the interstellar medium — the gas, dust, molecular clouds, and HII regions that are the raw material of future generations of stars — and concludes with the full physics of star formation, from the Jeans criterion and gravitational collapse through pre-main-sequence evolution to the birth of massive stellar systems.

Course website: https://cassa.site/abekta/courses/ast402/

AST 403: Galaxies and Intergalactic Medium

Galaxies are the universe’s fundamental units of meaning — vast islands of stars, gas, dark matter, and history, each one a separate cosmos unto itself. Yet no galaxy exists in isolation. They are born from the cosmic web, shaped by their neighbours, transformed by mergers and collisions, and embedded in an intergalactic medium that connects everything to everything else. AST 403 is the course that situates us within this grand architecture — asking not just what galaxies are, but what they reveal about the nature and fate of the universe we inhabit.

The syllabus opens at home, with a rigorous mapping of the Milky Way and the dynamics of stellar orbits within it, before expanding to the Local Group and the diverse population of galaxies beyond — spirals, lenticulars, ellipticals, and dwarfs. Students master the key observational tools: surface photometry, rotation curves, the Tully-Fisher and Faber-Jackson relations, and the fundamental plane. The course then advances into active galactic nuclei, quasars, and the Lyman-α forest before tackling galaxy formation theory: gravitational collapse, dark matter halo assembly, star formation laws, chemical evolution, and the transformation of galaxies through mergers, tidal stripping, and dynamical friction. It concludes with the ionization history of the intergalactic medium and the first galaxies of cosmic dawn.

Course website: https://cassa.site/abekta/courses/ast403/

AST 410: Radio Astronomy

The universe is largely invisible to the naked eye. Most of what exists — cold hydrogen clouds, spinning pulsars, jets from supermassive black holes, the faint echo of the Big Bang itself — announces its presence not in visible light but in radio waves. Radio astronomy is the art and science of listening to that invisible universe, and it has produced some of the most transformative discoveries in the history of science. AST 410 is where students learn to hear what the cosmos is saying.

The syllabus begins with the physics of radio radiation — blackbody emission, brightness temperature, polarization, and Stokes parameters — before moving through the engineering of radio telescopes: reflector optics, heterodyne receivers, noise characterization, and the full chain from antenna to spectrometer. Students then master single-dish observational techniques and advance into the theory of interferometry and aperture synthesis — the Fourier relationship between source structure and the visibility function, uv-plane coverage, and sensitivity limits — which underlies instruments like ALMA and the SKA. The course concludes with the astrophysical payoff: 21-cm HI emission, the rotation curve of the Galaxy, molecular clouds, HII regions, radio emission from stars and active galactic nuclei, and the cosmic microwave background — the full radio sky, decoded.

Course website: https://cassa.site/abekta/courses/ast410/

PHY 402: Cosmology

At the heart of physics lies a question so vast it can barely be spoken: what is the universe, and how did it come to be? PHY 402 is the course that takes that question with full mathematical seriousness. Where AST 301 surveys the observational evidence for our cosmic picture, Cosmology goes deeper — into the geometric fabric of spacetime itself, into the equations that govern the birth, expansion, and ultimate fate of everything. It is the most ambitious course in the Minor, and for the student ready for it, one of the most profound intellectual experiences in all of science.

The syllabus opens with a rigorous review of General Relativity — manifolds, tensors, geodesics, curvature, and the Einstein equation — before applying this machinery to the expanding universe through the Robertson-Walker metric and the Friedmann equations. Students then trace the thermal history of the cosmos: the primordial plasma, neutrino decoupling, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and recombination. Cosmic inflation is treated in full, addressing the horizon and flatness problems through slow-roll scalar field dynamics. The course then advances into structure formation — Newtonian and relativistic perturbation theory, the primordial power spectrum, and CMB angular anisotropies — before concluding with quantum initial conditions: the quantum origin of the density fluctuations that seeded every galaxy, star, and planet in the observable universe.

Course website: https://cassa.site/abekta/courses/phy402/

PHY 424: Atmospheric and Space Physics

We live at the bottom of a thin shell of gas surrounding a rocky planet, buffeted by a stream of charged particles from a middle-aged star, within a solar system embedded in the magnetic arms of a galaxy. PHY 424 is the course that makes sense of this intimate entanglement between Earth and the cosmos around it. It is where geophysics meets astrophysics — where the physics of our own world is revealed to be inseparable from the physics of the space in which it moves.

The syllabus begins on the ground, with a rigorous treatment of Earth’s atmosphere: its structure, composition, and the dynamic meteorology that governs weather — hydrostatic equilibrium, vorticity, the planetary boundary layer, and condensation. It then rises above the atmosphere into the space environment, where the physics of charged particles and electromagnetic fields takes over: gyration, electric and magnetic drifts, the dipole field of Earth’s magnetosphere, trapped particle populations, the ring current, and the ionosphere. The course culminates in the electrodynamics of the magnetosphere-ionosphere system — convection electric fields, high-latitude currents, auroral electrojets, and magnetospheric substorms — connecting our everyday sky to the vast, dynamic plasma environment that envelops our planet and links it directly to the Sun.

Note: This course was renumbered from PHY 434 following curriculum approval.

Course website: https://cassa.site/abekta/courses/phy424/

Instructors

Syed Ashraf Uddin, PhD

[email protected]

Associate Professor; Coordinator, Astronomy and Astrophysics Committee (AAC), Department of Physical Sciences, IUB.

Research area: Supernova cosmology, transient astronomy. More details on the Research Areas page.

Khan Muhammad Bin Asad, PhD

[email protected]

Assistant Professor; Member, Astronomy and Astrophysics Committee, Department of Physical Sciences, IUB.

Research area: cosmic hydrogen through 21-cm line, galaxies and their environments, radio and x-ray astronomy techniques. More details on the Research Areas page.

Theoretical physics courses

PHY 230: Mathematics for Physics

PHY 430: Relativity: Special & General

PHY 431: Particle Physics

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PHY 443: Black Hole Physics