Requirements to Pass this Unit

To pass this unit students will need to achieve a total mark equal to or greater than 50% across all assessments.

Unit workload

The 'estimated time on task' for each assessment item is an estimate of the additional time needed to complete each assessment outside of all scheduled learning activities. These estimates assume that you actively engage with all scheduled learning activities. 

Late Assessment Submissions

For any late submission of assessments, please notify the convenor and apply for Special Consideration as soon as possible: https://connect.mq.edu.au (see below for more details). Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, late submissions / late work will not be accepted:

• Astrophysics Problem-Solving Exercise - The Astrophysics Problem-Solving Exercise will be completed in the Week 7 Workshop (20 April, 2026). If you miss this assessment you must apply for Special Consideration to be given a chance to complete the assessment later in the session.
• Computational Laboratory Portfolio - Computational Lab Portfolio materials not submitted by the final due date (Sunday, 7 June, 11:55 PM) will not receive marks without Special Consideration. A 1-hour grace period will be provided to students who encounter technical difficulties in uploading their work.

Special Consideration

The Special Consideration Policy aims to support students who have been impacted by short-term circumstances or events that are serious, unavoidable and significantly disruptive, and which may affect their performance in assessment. If you experience circumstances or events that affect your ability to complete the assessments in this unit on time, please inform the convenor and submit a Special Consideration request through Service Connect.

Classes

• Self-directed learning (beginning in Week 1): Each week resources will be made available on iLearn for students to learn the subject matter covered that week.
• Workshops (beginning in Week 1): Each week there is a two-hour Workshop which will combine a review of key concepts from that week's material with problem solving exercises.
• Computer Labs (beginning in Week 3): This is a two-hour hands-on class involving a series of computer labs, completed using Python Notebooks within the Google Colab environment.

The timetable for classes can be found on the University website at: https://publish.mq.edu.au/. Enrolment can be managed using eStudent at: https://students.mq.edu.au/support/technology/systems/estudent.

As noted above, learning resources will be provided on iLearn. There is no required text, although the Milky Way Galaxy component will primarily draw content from the book "Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction" 2nd Ed. by Sparke and Gallagher, supplemented by material from "An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics" 2nd Ed. by Carroll and Ostlie and "Galactic Astronomy" by Binney and Merrifield. Useful resources for the data science part of the course are the books "Statistics, Data Mining, and Machine Learning in Astronomy: A Practical Python Guide for the Analysis of Survey Data" by Ivezic et al. and "Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and Tensorflow" by Geron.

Attendance and participation

We strongly encourage all students to actively participate in all learning activities. Regular engagement is crucial for your success in this unit, as these activities provide opportunities to deepen your understanding of the material, collaborate with peers, and receive valuable feedback from instructors, to assist in completing the unit assessments. Your active participation not only enhances your own learning experience but also contributes to a vibrant and dynamic learning environment for everyone.

Unit communication

Unit staff will communicate with you via your university email or through announcements on iLearn. Queries to convenors should be placed on the iLearn General Forum.

For matters of a more personal nature, and that do not concern other students, you should contact the Unit Convenor, Daniel Zucker, by email. Contact details are also provided at the start of this document.  

Hurdles have been removed, there are no longer formal scheduled lectures, a series of computer laboratory reports has been replaced with a Computer Laboratory Portfolio, and a series of problem sets has been replaced with an Astrophysics Problem-Solving Exercise, such that there is now a total of three assessments for the unit.