Attendance is required at all lecture and lab classes. You must notify the instructor in advance if you are unable to attend a lab. Using a preprogrammed calculator on an exam to store information not available to the entire class, including solutions or equations, is considered cheating. This is an astrophysics class and, therefore, it has similarities to physics classes. Astrophysics is a conceptual and mathematical science and will require using mathematics and mental models as tools for solving problems.
Some students believe that if they can follow the lectures in class, then they have learned physics.
This is not true. To learn astrophysics, a student must do a significant amount of work outside of class thinking about, and interacting with, the course material. No one ever learns physics by simply reading about it or listening to someone talk about it. You learn it by making the effort to understand the material, building mental pictures, and by solving problems using the principles learned. The standard requirement in a college class is that you spend two hours outside class working on the material for every hour in class.