# ASTR 350 Reference Log Tracks references, datasets, and visuals used in ASTR 350 materials, their verification status, and any human spot-check requirements. Provenance is labeled at one of three explicit levels throughout: **(1) live-verified this session** (fetched/extracted from a primary or authoritative source during this course's production), **(2) standard published/literature value not re-verified this session** (flagged for human spot-check), or **(3) synthetic/instructor-provided/illustrative placeholder**. ## Textbook - OpenStax Astronomy 2e (openly licensed; local extracted copy `references/openstax-astronomy-2e-extracted.txt`). Exoplanet detection methods are introduced descriptively in the "Exoplanets" section of Chapter 7; habitable-zone, biosignature, and Drake-equation topics are introduced descriptively in Chapter 30 (Life in the Universe). These chapter/section citations follow the ASTR320/330 precedent of native OpenStax chapter numbering, **extrapolated by analogy rather than independently cross-checked against embedded figure/table numbering this session** -- flagged for human spot-check below. Nearly every quantitative ASTR 350 topic (the radial-velocity semi-amplitude derivation, the transit depth/duration relations, the mass-radius composition degeneracy, atmospheric scale height and Jeans escape, the radiative-equilibrium habitable-zone boundary, and the Drake equation) is **not covered at the introductory level in OpenStax Astronomy 2e at all** and is developed here from first principles instead. ## Real Data Used in Lectures/Labs/Problem Sets | Dataset | Used in | Source | Verification Level | |---|---|---|---| | 51 Pegasi b: P=4.2308 d, a=0.05234 AU, e<0.0063, K=55.9 m/s, Mp sin(i)=0.469 MJup, true mass=0.61 MJup, i=49.8° | Lectures 01, 03, 05, 09, 14; Labs 01, 05; PS 01, 05 | Wikipedia "51 Pegasi b" article, retrieved live this session (2026-09-24), citing Mayor & Queloz (1995), *Nature* 378, 355 | **Level 1: live-verified this session.** See "Corrections Made During Production" below for a units error caught and corrected in this same dataset. | | HD 209458 b: P=3.5247 d, a=0.04707 AU, e<0.0081, K=84.27 m/s, mass=0.682 MJup, radius=1.359 RJup, i=86.71°, transit depth≈1.5-1.7%, transit duration≈3 h, exosphere extent=3.1 RJup, mass loss≈1-5×10⁸ kg/s, exosphere T≈10,000 K | Lectures 02, 03, 04, 06, 07, 08, 09; Labs 01, 02, 04; PS 01, 02, 04 | Wikipedia "HD 209458 b" article, retrieved live this session (2026-09-24), citing Charbonneau et al. (2000), *ApJ* 529, L45; Henry et al. (2000), *ApJ* 529, L41; Vidal-Madjar et al. (2003, 2004); Charbonneau et al. (2002) | **Level 1: live-verified this session.** This course's primary real transiting/atmosphere-characterization dataset. | | TRAPPIST-1 system: star mass/radius/luminosity/Teff, seven planets' orbital periods/semimajor axes/masses/radii | Lectures 03, 04, 05, 06, 09, 11; Labs 02, 03, 05, 06 | Reused/extended from this curriculum's ASTR320 course, where it was live-verified via direct web fetch of Wikipedia's "TRAPPIST-1" article (2026-09-24), citing Agol et al. (2021), *PSJ* 2, 1; Ducrot et al. (2020), *A&A* 640, A112; Gillon et al. (2017), *Nature* 542, 456; Delrez et al. (2022), *A&A* 667, A59 | **Level 1 (star and orbital parameters, per ASTR320's live verification) / Level 2 (per-planet mass/radius values, standard published Agol et al. 2021 results consistent with the range ASTR320 already established, not independently re-verified this session).** | | HD 80606 b (a=0.455 AU, e=0.93, mass=4.20 MJup) and 16 Cygni B b (a=1.68 AU, e=0.69, mass=1.5 MJup) | Lecture 05; Lab 03 (discussion) | Naef et al. (2001), *A&A* 375, L27 (HD 80606 b); Cochran et al. (1997), *ApJ* 483, 457 (16 Cyg B b) -- standard published discovery-paper values | **Level 2: not independently re-verified this session.** | | Kasting, Whitmire & Reynolds (1993) conservative habitable-zone flux boundaries (S_inner=1.1, S_outer=0.32, in units of Earth's insolation) | Lectures 09, 10; Lab 05; PS 05 | Kasting, J.F., Whitmire, D.P., Reynolds, R.T. (1993), *Icarus* 101, 108, "Habitable Zones around Main Sequence Stars" -- widely cited, standard published values | **Level 2: not independently re-verified this session.** Deliberately adopted as simple, well-established round numbers rather than a more elaborate polynomial fit (e.g., Kopparapu et al. 2013) to avoid presenting borderline-remembered higher-precision coefficients as verified data; see note below. | | Extremophile records: Pyrolobus fumarii (113°C upper growth limit), "Strain 121" (121°C survival), Planococcus halocryophilus (-25°C growth), Deinococcus radiodurans (~5000 Gy acute radiation survival), Tardigrada (~600 MPa pressure survival), Haloarchaea (~32% salinity) | Lecture 12; Lab 06; PS 06 | Blochl et al. (1997), *Extremophiles* 1, 14; Kashefi & Lovley (2003), *Science* 301, 934; Mykytczuk et al. (2013), *ISME J.* 7, 1211; Daly (2009) and radiobiology literature; Seki & Toyoshima (1998), *Nature* 395, 853; Jonsson et al. (2008), *Current Biology* 18, R729 | **Level 2: not independently re-verified this session.** Flagged for spot-check below. | | Miller-Urey (1953) spark-discharge amino-acid relative-abundance ranking (glycine highest, then alanine, beta-alanine, aspartic/glutamic acid) | Lecture 13; discussed in PS 07 | Miller (1953), *Science* 117, 528; reanalysis by Johnson, Cleaves, Bada et al. (2008), *Science* 322, 404 | **Level 2 (the relative ranking itself is real, published data) / Level 3 (the specific illustrative bar-chart heights in Lecture 13's figure are NOT the original chromatogram's calibrated micromole quantities and are explicitly labeled as illustrative, order-of-magnitude relative values consistent with the published ranking).** | | Drake equation astronomical terms: R*≈1.5 new Sun-like stars/yr, f_p≈1.0, n_e≈0.4 habitable-zone-compatible planets/system | Lecture 14; Lab 07; PS 07 | Standard order-of-magnitude estimates consistent with Kepler/Gaia-era occurrence-rate literature (Batalha et al. 2013-class and Bryson et al. 2021-class eta-Earth studies) | **Level 2: not independently re-verified this session.** | | Drake equation biological terms: f_l, f_i, f_c, L | Lecture 14; Lab 07; PS 07 | No observational constraint exists; values used span an explicitly stated optimistic-to-pessimistic range for pedagogical purposes | **Level 3: synthetic/illustrative placeholder, explicitly and repeatedly labeled as such in every lecture/lab/problem-set that uses them.** | ## Note on the Habitable-Zone Boundary Choice This course deliberately adopts the simple, round, well-established Kasting, Whitmire & Reynolds (1993) conservative flux-boundary values (1.1 and 0.32 times Earth's insolation) rather than a more elaborate, higher-precision polynomial fit (e.g., the stellar-temperature-dependent coefficients in Kopparapu et al. 2013). This choice was made explicitly to avoid presenting borderline-remembered higher-precision decimal coefficients as verified data when they could not be independently re-derived or fetched with confidence this session; the physics (radiative-equilibrium flux balance) is derived independently in Lecture 09, and only the two round flux-boundary numbers are treated as an external, cited literature input. ## Corrections Made During Production - **51 Pegasi b radial-velocity semi-amplitude units (Lecture 01, Lab 01):** the live web fetch of Wikipedia's "51 Pegasi b" infobox returned "Semi-amplitude 55.77±0.15 km/s." This is inconsistent with (a) the same article's own discovery-section prose ("velocity changes ... of around 70 metres per second") and (b) the well-established published value from Mayor & Queloz (1995) of K≈55.9 m/s. This is exactly the class of unit-conversion error the course-materials-review skill requires catching; the correct units (m/s) are used throughout this course's lectures, labs, and problem sets, and this discrepancy is disclosed here rather than silently repeated or silently corrected without a note. ## Visuals Lecture-specific SVG diagrams are generated programmatically per lecture (see `src/generate_astr350_content.py`), including a real-data radial-velocity sine curve (51 Pegasi b), a real-data transit light curve (HD 209458 b), a synthetic transmission spectrum grounded in this course's own computed scale height with a real sodium-line feature marked, a Jeans-escape-parameter curve, real habitable-zone boundary curves, a schematic climate-feedback loop diagram, a biosignature absorption-band diagram, an extremophile-tolerance scatter plot, a Miller-Urey relative-abundance bar chart, and a Drake-equation waterfall diagram; all are schematic/explanatory rather than photographic, so no external image licensing is required. Every lecture's visual-reasoning figure is a structurally distinct diagram type (verified via a mechanical grep-based check for repeated SVG coordinate/shape signatures across all 14 lecture files; only the shared header rectangle/title text block repeats, as expected -- the actual data-plot content of every figure is distinct, confirmed both by the grep check and by each figure's unique `aria-label` description). ## Human Spot-Check Checklist Before Instructional Use - [ ] Confirm 51 Pegasi b's orbital parameters and (corrected, m/s) radial-velocity semi-amplitude directly against Mayor & Queloz (1995). - [ ] Confirm HD 209458 b's transit depth/duration, exosphere extent, and mass-loss rate directly against Charbonneau et al. (2000) and Vidal-Madjar et al. (2003, 2004). - [ ] Confirm TRAPPIST-1's per-planet mass/radius values directly against Agol et al. (2021), not just against ASTR320's prior citation of the same range. - [ ] Confirm HD 80606 b's and 16 Cygni B b's orbital parameters against Naef et al. (2001) and Cochran et al. (1997) respectively. - [ ] Confirm the Kasting, Whitmire & Reynolds (1993) habitable-zone flux-boundary values against the primary paper, and consider whether a higher-precision boundary fit (e.g., Kopparapu et al. 2013) should be substituted for instructional use. - [ ] Confirm each extremophile record (temperature, pressure, radiation, salinity) against its cited primary literature. - [ ] Verify exact OpenStax Astronomy 2e Chapter 7 and Chapter 30 section/page numbers against the adopted edition. Last updated: 2026-09-24