Advanced Labwork in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Winter Term 2021

The specialized course in Astronomy and Astrophysics offers an advanced labwork. The experiments will take place at section Astronomy (Sand 1) or at section Computational Physics (Auf der Morgenstelle 10) or online.
See also the central website for more information including the link to ilias.


The students have to choose one of the following two exercises:


I --- Chaos in planetary systems - Wilhelm Kley & Christoph Schäfer
In this part of the practical course, the students will develop a computer code for the simulation of the gravitational interaction between planets and will validate their code with the two body problem. After successfully simulating the two body problem, the students will apply their code to the chaotic three body problem. Students are expected to read the instructions.

Instructions and related paper


II --- N-Body Simulations with REBOUND - Christoph Schäfer
In this part of the practical course, the students will use an existing N-Body software package to address several problems such as the stability of Saturn's rings and the Kirkwood gaps.


REBOUND requires a Linux or macOS operating system. It also runs on Windows 10 by the use of the windows subsystem for linux, though, it is not recommened. Please see this document if you have to use Windows 10 and want to do this experiment.


Students are expected to read the instructions.

Instructions Some useful links for programming in C or python and plotting tools Back.



last update: 2021-09-24