I would consider taking this class again. If you have time to study/memorize some textbook stuff, you will be fine.
The grading distribution was the midterms were 45%, the labs were 20%, and the final was 35%. There were three midterms but your score is best out of two. So if you get 0% on one, 50% on another, and 100% on the last one, your midterm grade will be 75%, not 50%. The two best scores are averaged. The midterms are week 4, 6, and 9; each midterm is NOT cumulative and will be based on an average of 4 chapters.
There are, I believe, 10 lab assignments (10 pre-lab short pdfs and 10 lab pdfs). I think you only needed to do 8 out of 10, so you could miss two pre-labs and two labs. Other than that, you ABSOLUTELY need to go to lab. It is extremely easy, the TA will walk you through it but you do need to go. Make sure to submit the pre-lab before the lab starts; they are easy but you can email your TA for help if needed.
To do well in the class: Go to every single lab, check every lab question with your TA before submitting, do every pre-lab and check with your TA, read every single chapter (a lot of boring, you got this), and answer/study every single end of chapter question/study review questions. The end of chapter questions that ask for answers (not group discussions) WILL appear on the midterms/final, as well the study questions. If you know every single one of those questions and nothing else, you will most likely get at least a 95% on every single midterm. While I had taken an Astronomy class before this, the majority of this content was new to me. By doing the method described above, I consistently score the highest or second highest on every exam. Please study the questions!
The final is cumulative and will contain questions from every single chapter, I think, so about 19 chapters.
In full honesty, this class was in 147 Dodd which I believe is cursed and I fall asleep there every time. So, I usually skipped class. Still got an A+. Take this class, do the work, and you'll be fine.
Misc things: the lectures are boring unfortunately, the room will be cold so bring a jacket, the curve will be amazing every time (highest score goes to 100%), and your bruinlearn is automatically curved at the beginning but the curve may change so beware.
Good luck and you got this!

Professor Fitzgerald is extremely knowledgeable on the subject and obviously finds the topics he covers incredibly interesting, but it doesn’t quite translate to the lectures which are a drag to go through. They essentially just consist of him talking for 75 minutes straight on a slide deck with little to no text.

The class had 3 midterms and a final, which meant that the class moved very quickly, as there were only around 3-4 lectures between midterms. The midterms were around 60 questions each, with 10 fill in the blank and the remaining being multiple choice. The questions however ranged from being elementary school level (what’s the order of the planets), to a fair bit of study level (questions about more specific parts of the solar system), to borderline trivia that you wouldn’t think you needed to know for the class since it’s science not history (who was the first person to use the telescope).

The midterm average was surprisingly low, being a 66% usually, and he’d always have a small lecture about it by saying that “this is an opportunity to reflect on your study habits” before going on to say that we should be studying for 10 hours a week on this class, which is a ludicrous amount of time to spend on a GE.

I did like this class more than most though, personally. I think a lot of the reviews were a bit harsh on professor Fitzgerald and he’s a very interesting and kind professor if you get to speak to him.

it's an insane amount of material to cover in 10 weeks and you need to take very detailed notes and even that might not be enough. His lectures are incredibly boring and just him saying exactly what is in the textbook with little to no additional information. The exams are HARD and incredibly specific. Three 60 question midterms and an 150 question final. If you can avoid this class, please do, if not, good luck charlie! (he curves so it isn't gonna tank your gpa but still its not fun or easy at all)

I took this class as a humanities major for a GE and still got an A. An A is definitely doable but it's hard work. There's luckily no homework other than reading the textbook and labs which is nice. On the downside there's 3 midterms and a final, but one of the midterms gets dropped and the final grade gets curved. The lectures are really boring and he goes through the slides fast but they're basically the same as the textbook. I recommend reading the textbook because I read it first half of the quarter and didn't the second half and noticed the difference. The final was also 10x harder than the midterms and based more on the later chapters so study those. Labs were also pretty easy and the TA's help a lot. Professor Fitzgerald is very helpful during office hours though and explaining what you got wrong on the midterms.

This is a very interesting course. However the method of evaluation, midterms, and final are very difficult. This professor is very un-engaging and boring in his lectures. If you do the readings, study a lot on your own, and are a good m/c test taker, you will succeed in this class.

This course has interesting material but I did not like the way our knowledge on the material was tested. The midterms require you to remember random little details from the textbook reading that do not actually demonstrate comprehension of the material; while some test questions were more targeted toward the actual understanding of a topic and not just memorization, I found many of the questions to not be this way. He moved too fast through the powerpoints for anyone to write down anything more than a general concept of each slide (sometimes he still moved too fast for this), which makes it very challenging when some test questions as for memorized quantities or information that he did not give us time to copy down. While the slides are on canvas, it makes it challenging to review every slideshow after every lecture on top of the chapter readings.

Course pace was fast, but not overly so. I don't think this class needed 3 midterms, but it was nice that we could drop one. I think Professor Fitzgerald is a fine lecturer and seems to be quite knowledgeable about the content material. I say that, but after taking the first midterm, I stopped going to lectures because all you need to do is read the textbook to do well on the midterms and final. Labs were not difficult, there was no homework (besides really easy weekly pre-labs). You could drop two labs as well. Honestly, just reading the textbook and taking the notes is enough to get an A.

There were no exams for this course, just projects. Homework assignments and projects are quite tough if you don't have a coding background beyond the prerequisites, and I had to go to office hours every week to figure them out. The professor was very nice but often quite unclear on the assignment rubrics, making the homework a good bit more difficult than I think it was intended to. The lectures also sometimes felt pretty disconnected from what we were doing in class, but were still interesting. Discussion was super helpful tho! I'd definitely still recommend this class though, it covers so much necessary material if you are considering a career in astrophysics. It helped me so much with my own research and I'm honestly shocked it hasn't been introduced before!

I did not like this class at all. The homework was all online through the text book and Fitzgerald was incredibly boring. He also flagged me for plagiarism since one of my answers was similar to a quizlet he found online and I had to fight it through the dean. Would not recommend this class to anyone. The midterm and final were difficult and all multiple choice.

Fun class, professor is very knowledgeable in the course material and happy to answer any questions during lecture. Our first midterm was Week 3 so you definitely have to be on top the weekly reading material and class content. Overall recommend!