Undergraduate Program

Courses for non-majors

Instruction in astronomy for undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz is designed to meet the needs of several groups of students.

ASTR 1, ASTR 2, ASTR 3, ASTR 4, ASTR 5, ASTR 6, ASTR 7, and ASTR 8 provide a general survey of the universe as now understood from historical and modern observations, and are offered for those not specializing in a scientific discipline. ASTR 1 is a non-mathematical introduction to the universe. ASTR 1 and ASTR 6 on exploring our solar system in the space age, satisfy the scientific inquiry (SI) general education (GE) requirement. ASTR 2 through ASTR 5 and ASTR 7 provide an introduction, with the use of basic mathematics, to a diverse array of modern astronomy, covering planets, stars, the formation of the universe, and black holes, and satisfy the mathematical and formal reasons (MF) general education requirement. ASTR 8 explores the universe with astronomical data and satisfies the statistical reasoning (SR) GE.