Hi,

Some people here expressed an interest in studying Astronomy by distance learning. The college that I'm studying with has opend enrollments for the next semester if anyone is interested in having a look at it astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/

There are several other places offering Astronomy courses online including the OU and University of Leicester.

Cheers,
~Al

Hi Al,

Which course are you doing?
I did a course last year with the University of Central Lancashire and found it interesting, albeit a bit focused on the math-physics. It's not that I'm not able for that sort of thing but felt it was just a bit too focused on that particular side. However, the practicals were very interesting.

I didn't see any info on cost. Any chance you could point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Michael

Hi,

I'm actualy slowly working myself through the MSc course, at one unit a semester, doing more than that leaves you with no free time.

Basically you need to complete 12 units, at a cost of AUD $1020.00 each (~EUR550). Though you can just do an individual unit if you want.

The courses that I have done so far have had little maths content, and its the one fault I would put against their system, though having said that if you are interested in some mathematical aspects of a unit you can correspond with the tutor and other students, you are fairly free to go off on tangents like that once its still in the realm of the subject.

The material is sent out to you on a CD with about 35 powerpoint presentations. The assesment is done in 4 ways:
30% based on your contribution to the newsgroup discussions over the whole course.
30% based on a project (my latest was a 10 page paper on the tully fisher relationship and analysis of galaxies in online databases)
20% for a 2000 word essay.
20% based on two online open book exams.

astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/units.html has the units listed

Cheers,
~Al