Professor Rubin presents interesting course material in a highly engaging and effective way, weaving in a delightful blend of relevant jokes, stories, and movie reviews to add plentiful educational entertainment. The weekly homework sets and labs neatly complement lecture material, and explore a variety of intriguing course topics such as meteorites, impact craters, and the Moon. Exams are fair and correspond well to topics covered in lectures.

Despite the online situation, Professor Rubin's efforts to create an interactive and informational class - from fun, colourful slides to themed Zoom backgrounds customised for each lecture to chatting with students on topics of interest - has made this course one of my favourites. The course is wonderfully structured for the virtual format, and I am sure it would work just as well in-person, as Professor Rubin is not only so knowledgeable and skilled in his subject, but also amazing at lecturing in an enjoyable manner! I would highly recommend this course to anyone remotely intrigued by comets, Martians, dark energy, what happened to Pluto, or any space-related topic...and certainly to non-science majors. (As a non-science major, I was quite relieved to find this course to be a perfect balance of challenging material and reasonable workload/pace--and that science courses do not discriminate against right-brained individuals such as myself!)

Overall, I found this course to be an astronomically stellar experience, complete with a toolbox full of valuable skills, knowledge, and insights that I am sure will continue to benefit me (even on my non-science track). And did I mention?--Professor Rubin has an asteroid named after him! (Go look it up--not kidding!)

Professor Rubin is a very dedicated and passionate teacher. I'm not very interested in the subject but he did a good job keeping it interesting and making lectures funny. The class was not very hard, but did require a solid amount of studying right before midterms and finals because his powerpoints are 70-120 slides each.

Professor Rubin is one of the best professors at UCLA. Very helpful, and eager to transfer his knowledge to students. His power point slides and his lectures are very clear, exciting and fun. Very fair exams. He welcomes questions in class and very helpful during the office hours. You will love his class and learn so much.