Birth of Stars and Planets

1. Birth of Stars and Planets

2. Lesson Essential Question • How did gravity lead to the formation of the solar system?

3. Gravity • What is it? • Gravity is the attractive force that exists between any two objects which is dependent upon the masses of the objects and the distances between them.

4. What does the Hubble Telescope show us?

5. The Universe

6. A Spiral Galaxy called the Milky Way Galaxy

9. Light Pollution

11. The Solar Nebular Theory • Solar - pertaining to the sun • Nebula - a large cloud of interstellar gas and dust. • Theory - a well substantiated explanation of something in the natural world.

12. Stars • A star is a large, hot, glowing ball of gas that is powered by nuclear fusion. • Stars have a life. They begin as a nebula. • Star formation is the same for all stars; however their ends can be dramatically different.

13. What caused the sun and solar system to form?

14. SNT – Step 1 – Gravity caused massive clouds of dust to condense (come together/become smaller).

15. Step 2 – As these clouds continue to get smaller, they flatten into spinning disks

16. Step 3 – Most of the mass in this disk ends up in the center, eventually becoming a star

18. Step 4 • Matter not drawn into the center where the star forms will condense/form into planets

20. That is a basic explanation of how the solar system formed. We need more proof though. We will try to prove this using images from Hubble. Let’s see some!

32. in your own words describe the different features you see in image M16. • On a sheet of paper:

34. Question 1: How would gravity act on the gaseous pillars in image 1? Would it cause them to grow larger by expanding, or would it cause them to grow smaller by contracting? Justify your answer.

35. Image 2 – Orion Nebula, or M42 This picture is much “smaller” then previous (only 800 billion miles across)

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37. Question 2: Think about the answer to question 1. If gravity does influence the gaseous pillars and the gas clouds, which of the two images (1 or 2) probably represents the earlier stage of the formation of stars and planets?

38. Question 3: Of the 4 “blobs” in image 2, which is most likely the furthest developed in becoming a solar system similar to ours?

39. Question 4: If gravity continued to act on these, what do you predict would eventually happen to these gas clouds?

40. Now let’s look at the following three images

41. Of the three, decide which would come first, second and then third. Explain why you put each picture in the order that you did.

42. Solar Nebula Theory Review • Nebula- large cloud of gas and dust starts to contract • The nebula shrinks as particles pull on one another due to gravity. • Nebula breaks into smaller pieces due to gravity differences in less dense areas. • Temperature in cloud increases as cloud decreases in size. • After temperature reaches 10 million degrees hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium, a star is born.

43. Discovery Education • Video Clip : Formation of the Solar System • Evolution of stars ( Nebula) textbook pages 734-739 • Do Self Check Review questions: 1-6 on page 739.