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SCALES: PLANETARY

SCALES: PLANETARY. Problem for Astronomers: there is no sense of depth from looking at the sky. Comet Hale-Bopp: 10 light- minutes away. Andromeda Galaxy: 2 million light-years away. Proximity on the sky does not tell us about proximity in space.

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SCALES: PLANETARY

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  1. SCALES: PLANETARY

  2. Problemfor Astronomers: there is no sense of depth from looking at the sky. Comet Hale-Bopp: 10 light-minutes away Andromeda Galaxy: 2 million light-years away

  3. Proximity on the sky does not tell us about proximity in space. If two stars appear equally bright, one could be luminous and far and the other feeble and near.

  4. Apparent size does not tell us about proximity in space. If two monks appear equal size, one could be adultand far and the other young and near. Sun and Moon have equal angles in the sky.

  5. GesheActivity Work in groups to set your expectations of the size of the Solar System and nearby stars. If the Earth is the size of small lime how far away and how big are: Moon, Sun, Jupiter, edge of the Solar System, and nearby stars?

  6. A SCALE MODEL

  7. Star A large, glowing ball of gas that generates heat and light through nuclear fusion.

  8. Planet A moderately large object which orbits a star; it shines only by reflected light. Planets may be rocky, icy, and small, or large and gaseous in composition. Mars Neptune

  9. Moon An object that orbits a planet. Also can be called a satellite. The largest moons are as large as the smallest planets. Ganymede (orbits Jupiter)

  10. Asteroid A relatively small and rocky object that orbits a star. Gaspra

  11. Comet A relatively small and icy object that orbits a star on an elliptical orbit. Hyukatake

  12. Earth shrunk from 13,000km to 4cm That’s a factor of 300,000,000 or 300 million

  13. Astronomers measure length in meters, astronomical units, and parsecs. Distance from Earth to Sun = 150 billion meters = 1.5 X 1011 meters = 1 astronomical unit (AU)

  14. Terrestrial Planets = 10,000 km Diam.

  15. Giant Planets = 10x Terrestrial Planets

  16. Solar-type Stars = 10x Giant Planets

  17. Sun is >99% of all Solar System mass >99% in star <1% in sum of planets, asteroids, meteors & comets

  18. Properties of the Sun (a star) Earth ↑ Diameter = 1.4 million kilometers = 100 × Earth diameter Mass = 2 × 1030 kilograms = 330,000 × Earth mass Age = 4.6 billion years

  19. SPACE SCALE MODEL: Just like a map of the Earth, this model of a solar system shrinks it to a manageable size, a 1:300,000,000 scale. • The Moon is a grape at 1m distance • The Sun is a 4m sphere 450 m away • Jupiter is a 0.5m ball 2.5km from Sun • Neptune is a 15cm ball 15 km away • The nearest star is 150,000 km away

  20. TIME SCALE MODEL: And at this scale, light is reduced to very fast walking speed. There’s no way information in the universe can travel any faster than this. • The Moon is a seconds walk away • The Sun is 8 minutes walk away • 5 hours to walk the Solar System • Years to walk to the nearest stars

  21. The Solar System is Empty Science is Seeing There is the Sun and not much else in the entire volume of the Solar System. In the scale model, that is 30 m3 in a volume of space 3 trillion m3 so only one part in 100 billion has anything.

  22. Scientific Visualization

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