This project’s main goal was to address the need to introduce the student to basic concepts important for a future project in astrophysics. After revising theoretical aspects of special and general relativity, cosmology and dark matter (evidences, candidates and detection), an experimental focus was given to rotation curves of spiral galaxies. It was used the standard “exponential disk+dark matter halo” model and the program Mathematica to obtain fits for the rotation curves of galaxy NGC 3198.