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First, a few orders of business…

First, a few orders of business…. Experiment #6: The Orbit of Mercury. “A Dead, Inert World”. Greatest Eastern and Western Elongations. Times when Mercury has greatest angular separation from the Sun in the sky Rises/sets ~2 hours before/after the Sun, so we can actually see Mercury!.

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First, a few orders of business…

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  1. First, a few orders of business…

  2. Experiment #6: The Orbit of Mercury

  3. “A Dead, Inert World”

  4. Greatest Eastern and Western Elongations • Times when Mercury has greatest angular separation from the Sun in the sky • Rises/sets ~2 hours before/after the Sun, so we can actually see Mercury!

  5. Why Do We Care? • Can’t generally tell where interior planets are hanging out… There is a contrast problem! • Where do you think those numbers in your textbook came from? • Let’s figure out the orbit of Mercury!!

  6. What This Looks Like in the Sky

  7. What This Looks Like to God

  8. Western Elongation: to the RIGHT of the Sun Eastern Elongation: to the LEFT of the Sun

  9. On To Business… You will plot table 6.1 on the Elongations of Mercury, thus tracing its orbit • Remember Earth moved around Sun (about 1 degree per day) while these measurements were taken, so swing your protractor around to match this rotation • Hint: Label your points

  10. Ways to lose all 28 points for the plot • Turning in a sloppy plot, including: • Drawing Lines Using pen instead of pencil • Not drawing straight lines • Getting the points we plot together wrong • Confusing eastern and western elongations

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