Equinox

Astronomy 101

Embark on a cosmic journey exploring the wonders of our universe — from celestial bodies to space exploration.

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Theoretical Astronomy
Module 1 · Astronomy Basics
Week 1 Origins of the Universe & Stellar Life
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Day 1 Big Bang Theory
▶ The Beginning of Everything ▶ Evidence of The Big Bang 🌐 The First Few Minutes 🌐 Timeline So Far — NASA
📖 Went curious? We recommend reading The First Three Minutes by Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg — read it here.
Day 2 After-Party of The Big Bang
▶ Timelapse of The Universe ▶ Cosmic Microwave Background ▶ Nucleosynthesis
📖 Want to go deeper?
• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking — read it here.
• David Tong's Lectures on Cosmology — read it here.
Day 3 Galactic Genesis
▶ Formation of Stars, Galaxies & Clusters ▶ Our Home Supercluster 🌐 Mechanisms of Galaxy Formation — NASA ▶ Cosmic Web ▶ Cosmic Voids 🌐 Mapping The Cosmic Web
▶ Want to learn more?
• Full tutorial on Stellar Evolution — watch it here.
Day 4 Dark Matter & Dark Energy
▶ Why Dark Matter & Energy? ▶ What is Dark Matter & Dark Energy? 🌐 Shining Light on Dark Matter & Energy ▶ Some More Dark Matter & Dark Energy ▶ M.O.N.D (Modified Newtonian Dynamics)
▶ Bonus Lecture on Dark Matter?
• What is Dark Matter and Why Does it Matter? by Physicist Dan Bauer — watch it here.
Day 5 Stellar Evolution & Black Holes
▶ Protostar Development ▶ T Tauri Phase ▶ A Star is Born ▶ Life Cycle of a Star ▶ Supernovae Explosions ▶ Neutron Stars ▶ Black Holes ▶ Short Film — The Journey
📖 Found this Interesting?
• Watch Blackholes and Other Cosmic Quandaries by Neil DeGrasse Tyson — watch it here.
• Read Stars: A Very Short Introduction by Andrew King
Week 2 Antimatter, Gravitational Waves & The Solar System
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Day 1Antimatter & Baryogenesis
▶ Does Antimatter Explain Why There's Something Rather Than Nothing? ▶ Where Did the Antimatter Go? ▶ What Happens if You Drop Antimatter? ▶ The Baryogenesis Anomaly ▶ How a One-in-a-Billion Mistake Made the Universe Possible
Day 2Gravitational Waves & LIGO
▶ The Craziest Experiment Humans Have Ever Built (LIGO) ▶ The Absurdity of Detecting Gravitational Waves ▶ LIGO's First Detection of Gravitational Waves! ▶ Was the Gravitational Wave Background Finally Discovered? ▶ How Pulsar Timing Arrays Detect Gravitational Waves
Day 3Spectroscopy, Light & Gravitational Lensing
▶ Spectroscopy Explained ▶ Light: Crash Course Astronomy ▶ The Gravity of the Situation ▶ General Relativity & Curved Spacetime Explained! ▶ The Strange Universe of Gravitational Lensing
Day 4The Solar System
▶ The Formation of the Solar System ▶ The Sun: Our Closest Star ▶ The Solar System — Our Home in Space ▶ How Does the Sun Work? ▶ Why Earth Sucks Compared to the Planet Venus/Hestia
Day 5Exoplanets & The Fermi Paradox
▶ What Is an Exoplanet? ▶ How Do We Find Exoplanets? ▶ The Drake Equation (Part 1) ▶ The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens? ▶ The Great Filter: Why Alien Life Would Be Our Doom
Week 3 Cosmology, Black Holes & General Relativity
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Day 1Cosmology Basics
▶ Cosmology 101: Exploring the Universe 🌐 Types of Galaxies — NASA
Day 2Black Holes — Part 1
▶ The Black Hole Information Paradox ▶ Black Hole Apocalypse: What's Inside a Black Hole? (upto 50:47)
Day 3Black Holes — Part 2
▶ Black Hole Apocalypse: What's Inside a Black Hole? (continued)
Day 4AGNs & Quasars
▶ Active Galactic Nuclei and Quasars!
Day 5General Relativity Basics
▶ What Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity ▶ Something Strange Happens When You Follow Einstein's Math
Week 4 Astrobiology, End of the Universe & Current Frontiers
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Day 1Astrobiology
▶ What is Astrobiology Explained ~12 min ▶ Introduction to Astrobiology ~35 min
▶ Want to know more?
• Astrobiology Course by European Space Agency — watch playlist here.
Day 2End of the Universe
▶ Three Ways to Destroy the Universe ~6 min ▶ Could the Universe End by Tearing Apart Every Atom? ~15 min ▶ What Happens After the Universe Ends? ~18 min
Day 3Current Frontiers in Astronomy & Cosmology — Part 1
▶ The Absurd Search For Dark Matter ~16 min ▶ Cosmology in Crisis? Confronting the Hubble Tension ~36 min
Day 4Current Frontiers in Astronomy & Cosmology — Part 2
▶ We Found the Most Powerful Object In the Universe ~26 min ▶ The Lithium Problem — Alas Lewis & Barnes ~17 min
Day 5Current Frontiers in Astronomy & Cosmology — Part 3
▶ The Anomaly at the Edge of the Universe ~42 min ▶ Shortcomings of the Standard Model & Scope Beyond ~17 min
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Computational Astronomy
Module 2 · Python · Data Science · ML
Week 1Python Foundations & Data Visualization
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Day 1Jupyter Notebook Setup + Python Basics (Part I)
▶ Jupyter Notebook Setup ▶ How to Use Kaggle For Data Science ▶ Python Tutorial - Watch till 1:06:33
Day 2Python Basics (Part II)
▶ Python Tutorial - Complete Video ▶ Lists, Sets and Tuples ▶ Dictionaries
Day 3Data Manipulation (Part I) — NumPy
▶ NumPy Tutorial 📘 NumPy Notebook
Day 4Data Manipulation (Part II) — Pandas
▶ Pandas Tutorial 📘 Pandas Notebook
Day 5Data Visualization — Matplotlib & Seaborn
▶ Matplotlib Tutorial - Part 1 ▶ Seaborn Tutorial 📘 Matplotlib Notebook ▶ Seaborn Crash Course
Week 2Machine Learning · Regression · Regularization
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Day 1Introduction to Machine Learning & Linear Regression
▶ ML Specialization Playlist — L1–3: What is ML? ▶ L4–8: Supervised & Unsupervised Learning ▶ L9–14: Linear Regression
Day 2Gradient Descent & Advanced Regression
▶ L15–20: Gradient Descent ▶ L21–24: Multivariate Linear Regression ▶ L25–30: Going Deeper in Linear Regression
Day 3Scikit-learn & Logistic Regression
▶ Intro to Scikit-Learn ▶ Linear Regression using Sklearn ▶ L31–36: Basics of Logistic Regression 📘 Logistic Regression from Scratch — Kaggle Notebook
Day 4Regularization & Overfitting
▶ Bias and Variance ▶ L37–41: Overfitting ▶ L2 Regularization ▶ L1 Regularization
Day 5Model Evaluation & Astropy
▶ Train-Test Split ▶ Cross Validation ▶ Astropy Library in Python
Week 3Evaluation Metrics · KNN · Naive Bayes · SVM
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Day 1Evaluation Metrics
🌐 Complete Guide to Evaluation Metrics ▶ ROC Curve & AUC ▶ Confusion Matrix ▶ Implementation of Evaluation Metrics - Tutorial
Day 2 K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN)
📘 Self-Implementation Practice — Evaluation Metrics ▶ K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) 🌐 K-Nearest Neighbor — Article ▶ Implementation of KNN
Day 3Naive Bayes & SVM (Part 1)
▶ Naive Bayes Algorithm ▶ Gaussian Naive Bayes ▶ Implementation of Naive Bayes ▶ Support Vector Machines — Part 1 ▶ Support Vector Machines — Part 2
Day 4SVM (Part 2)
▶ Support Vector Machines — Part 3 🌐 A Better Understanding of Support Vector Machines ▶ Implementation of SVM
Day 5Finding Exoplanets with Python & Lightkurve
▶ How To Find Exoplanets Using Python and Lightkurve
Week 4 Decision Tree · Random Forest · Boosting · Neural Networks & LLMs
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Day 1Decision Trees
▶ Decision Trees — StatQuest Playlist (Videos 46–49)
Day 2Random Forest & AdaBoost
▶ Random Forest — StatQuest Playlist (Videos 52–53) ▶ AdaBoost
Day 3Gradient Boosting
▶ Gradient Boosting — StatQuest Playlist (Videos 59–61)
Day 4XGBoost & CatBoost
▶ XGBoost — StatQuest Playlist (Videos 64–65) ▶ CatBoost — StatQuest Playlist (Videos 69–70)
Day 5Neural Networks & LLMs
▶ But What is a Neural Network? ▶ Gradient Descent: How Neural Networks Learn ▶ Transformers & LLMs
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Observational Astronomy
Module 3 · Stargazing · Telescopes · Astrophotography
Week 1Night Sky Basics & Tools
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Day 1Basics of Stargazing
▶ Getting Oriented to the Night Sky — Part 1 of 2 ▶ Getting Oriented to the Night Sky — Part 2 of 2 ▶ Stargazing Basics
Day 2How to See Planets
▶ Spotting Planets in the Night Sky
Day 3All Constellations
▶ Complete Guide to Constellations
Day 4Using Stellarium App & Solar Positions
▶ How to Use Stellarium ▶ Solar Positions Over a Year
Day 5Hanle Observatory
▶ Inside the Hanle Observatory — India's High-Altitude Telescope
Week 2Telescope Basics & Handling
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Day 1Basics & Types of Telescopes
▶ Basics of Telescopes ▶ Types of Telescopes
Day 2How to Use Any Telescope
▶ How to Use Any Telescope
Day 3Setting Up the Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope
▶ How to Setup a Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope
Day 4Telescope Accessories
▶ Telescope Accessories (Part 1) ▶ Telescope Accessories (Part 2)
Day 5Space Telescopes
▶ Space Telescopes
Week 3Camera Handling & Astrophotography
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Day 1Photography & Astrophotography Basics
▶ Photography Basics ▶ Astrophotography Basics
Day 2How to Use a Camera
▶ How to Use a Camera
Day 3Astrophotography Tutorial
▶ Astrophotography Tutorial
Day 4Connecting a Camera to a Telescope
▶ Connecting Camera to a Telescope
Day 5A Night of Astrophotography
▶ Take You for a Night of Astrophotography
Week 4 Calibration Frames · Image Stacking · Radio Astronomy · Solar Observation
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Day 1Calibration Frames
🌐 A Brief Guide to Calibration Frames ▶ Light, Dark, Flat and Bias Frames Explained
Day 2Image Stacking & Processing
▶ Image Stacking on DeepSkyStacker ▶ Siril + GIMP for Processing Images
Day 3Radio Astronomy
▶ What is Radio Astronomy? ▶ Using Radio Telescopes
Day 4Messier Marathon
▶ What is the Messier Marathon? ▶ Why the Messier Catalogue? ▶ How to Capture ALL Messier Objects in a Single Night
Day 5Solar Observation
▶ Beginner's Guide to Solar Viewing Through a Telescope ▶ Things to Remember While Solar Observing Through a Telescope
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Leaderboard
Astronomy 101 · Quiz Scores · All Weeks
Week 1 /48
Week 2 /46
Week 3 /47
Total /141
# Name Code Week 1 /48 Week 2 /46 Week 3 /47 Total /141
Observation  •  Stellar Evolution  •  Cosmology  •  Gravitational Waves  •  Redshift  •  Planetary Science  •  Spectroscopy  •  Astrophysics  •  Radio Astronomy  •  Dark Matter  •  Nucleosynthesis  •  Exoplanets  •  Big Bang  •  CMB  •  Black Holes  •  Observation  •  Stellar Evolution  •  Cosmology  •  Gravitational Waves  •  Redshift  •  Planetary Science  •  Spectroscopy  •  Astrophysics  •  Radio Astronomy  •  Dark Matter  •  Nucleosynthesis  •  Exoplanets  •  Big Bang  •  CMB  •  Black Holes  • 

Astronomy 101 Final Project

Project Helios to Andromeda

🚀 Welcome to the Astronomy 101 Final Project! 60% Weightage

This final project integrates all three modules of the Astronomy 101 course. Apply the concepts learned throughout the course by completing the Theoretical, Computational, and Observational modules. This project carries 60% of your overall course evaluation, so make sure to carefully follow all instructions and submission guidelines.

1
Theoretical Module
Analyze the physics behind solar flares, magnetic reconnection, magnetic instabilities, and space weather through conceptual questions.
2
Computational Module
Build a machine learning model to predict M5-class solar flares using magnetic field measurements. Perform EDA, feature engineering, imbalance handling, model comparison, and scientific analysis.
3
Observational Module
Process raw telescope images of the Andromeda Galaxy using DeepSkyStacker, Siril, and GIMP to produce a high-quality astrophotography image with workflow documentation.
⚠️ Important: This project carries 60% of your total course evaluation. Submit a single combined PDF report, a public Google Colab notebook for the Computational Module, and your final high-resolution Andromeda Galaxy image. Please follow the file naming convention and submission guidelines provided in the project statement.

Submission Deadline: 15 July 2026.
📄 Project Statement 📤 Submit Project