ASTR-301 Lessons

Good evening, class, and welcome to Year Three Astronomy. In the last two years you have learned about Earth’s place in the solar system, as well as how Earth interacts with its closest neighbour, the Moon.  Before we start discussing our relationship with the rest of the solar system and the near universe, I believe it is time to understand who we are and how we came to be here. Understanding our own planet gives us a foundation for understanding how other worlds differ from our own and how they interact with us.  

A majority of this year will be dedicated to telling the story of Earth.  Along the way we will see how our solar system came to be, how magic came to be a part of our planet, and how Earth nurtures and sustains life.

As humans, we have for a long time looked at the night sky.  Not only do we see thousands of stars on a clear night, we also seek to understand how they came to be and what their part of the universe may be like.  The origin of our solar system and our planet is not wholly unique.  We are now beginning to understand just how many other solar systems there are, and no doubt many formed in a similar way to our own.  As far as we know, there may very well be intelligent beings on other planets, some of whom look at the sky, ask questions about it, explore other worlds, and maybe even do magic.  We are not unique in all these respects even among intelligent beings here on Earth.  Centaurs look at the sky and ask questions about it.  House-elves and goblins do magic.  But there are some ways in which humans are unique among all intelligent beings, whether on Earth or elsewhere in the universe.  Can you think of some such ways?

Course Expectations

This year class will be held at eight o’clock on Monday evenings.  Please make sure you take time to have dinner in the Great Hall before class, as hungry students are less productive and less attentive.  That being said: do be on time to your lessons.  We have a lot of information to cover this year and it wouldn’t do to miss even a moment of our time together.

As with previous years, there will be weekly quizzes on lesson material at the end of each class.  Lesson Five will be accompanied by a longer midterm examination and our final class will be concluded by a final exam.  

Essays will also be assigned after some lessons.  As usual, there is no due date for any assignments, but it would be a good idea to turn them in to my desk each week at the beginning of class.  As this is a Year Three course, all essays will be mandatory.  While quizzes will focus on your understanding of the lesson material, essays will ask you to apply your understanding.  Essays will be graded under two categories: content and presentation.  The distribution of marks will be the same as in the previous years: 75% for content and 25% for presentation, consisting of 10% for meeting the minimum word count as is indicated in the prompt, 10% for spelling and grammar (unless you indicate NES or LD at the beginning of your essay), and 5% for not including any identifying information (such as your name and house).  It will be difficult to earn extra credit, but not impossible.  Up to five extra house points will be awarded for work that exceeds the expectations of the prompt.

 Course Expectations

This year class will be held at eight o’clock on Monday evenings.  Please do make sure you take time to have dinner in the Great Hall before class, as hungry students are less productive and less attentive in class.  That being said: do be on time to your lessons.  We have a lot of information to cover this year and it wouldn’t do to miss even a moment of our time together.

As with previous years, there will be weekly quizzes on lesson material at the end of each class.  Lesson Five will be accompanied by a longer midterm examination and our final class will be concluded by a final exam.

Essays will also be assigned after some lessons, to be turned in to my desk each week at the beginning of class.  As this is a Year Three course, essays will be mandatory.  While quizzes will focus on your understanding of the lesson material, essays will ask you to apply your understanding.  Essays will be graded under two categories: content and presentation.  Content will be 75% of your grade: you can earn points by completing all parts of the prompt completely and correctly.  Presentation will be 25% of your grade: ten points for correct spelling and grammar, ten points for effort shown and word count, and five points will be awarded if your essay does not include identifying information such as your name or house.  It will be difficult to earn extra credit, but not impossible.  Up to five points will be awarded for work that exceeds the expectations of the prompt.

Syllabus

Our Story Starts…

Magic is something that is inherent to the universe.  It is generated by the stars, whose formation and destruction also create everything else in the universe.  This magic, when it comes directly from its source, is unbelievably powerful and also very unpredictable.  It interferes with the magic we do, making our own magic unpredictable as well, including not working at all. In large amounts it can do great harm to living things, though in smaller doses, it can alter living things in profound ways.  Magical plants, animals, and beings are descended from organisms that had been imbued with magic in the very fibre of their being.  Of course, if you go back far enough, all living things are descended from both magical and non-magical bacteria, but the probability of a living thing’s being magical increases with the proportion of magical organisms among its ancestors.  Probability does not mean certainty, since random mutations can result in magical living things being born to non-magical parents and vice versa, like Muggle-borns and Squibs among humans. 

The magic we possess and use is a more refined version of this wild solar magic. That does not mean that this wild magic does not exist on Earth.  We know that stone and metal absorb magic.  When the Earth was formed, the intense solar magic was stored in the rock and metal of our planet and still exists in the interior of the Earth.  This energy is released periodically in certain places all over the world - by active volcanoes.  This wild magic is a powerful, often destructive, force, but it has also given us some of the most magical places on Earth.  The magical energy from the Sun is filtered by the atmosphere, allowing it to be controlled and manipulated by living things. More precisely, it is filtered by the troposphere.  As we learned in Year One, the filtering agent is water, in particular heavy water, and the troposphere contains most of the atmosphere’s water vapour.  That’s what made it possible for Ayesha Mansour to access wild magic on which to do her experiments by building her laboratory on the top of a mountain.  Magic reflected by the Moon goes through a similar process, though it affects living things in very different ways, as you learned last year.

 Starpuff:

A magical plant that blooms only in moonlight and is used in the Dreamless Sleep Potion.

Magic is everywhere in the universe, but Earth has proven, so far, to be unique in the deep link and interaction between magic, the planet, and its inhabitants. As far as we know, there are no other witches and wizards on other planets, able to understand and manipulate the cosmic energy of the universe as we do. This is our story.  Welcome to Year Three Astronomy!

That will be all today. There is a short quiz on the material covered in this lesson, and I will see you next week as we begin to explore the history of our planet Earth.

Original lesson written by Professor Gagarina.