The Formation and Structure of Our Solar System: A Comprehensive Overview, Schemes and Mind Maps of Astronomy

Download The Formation and Structure of Our Solar System: A Comprehensive Overview and more Schemes and Mind Maps Astronomy in PDF only on Docsity!

Moon Obs #1 Due!

 Moon visible: early morning through afternoon

 6 more due June 13

th

 15 total due June 25

th

 Final Report Due June 28th

Our Solar System

 Objectives

• Overview of what is in our solar system
• How was the solar system formed

Planets-Orbits

• All orbits have low eccentricity
• All roughly in the same plane
• All orbit in the same direction (CCW seen from above).
• Why is that???

Planets-Physical Properties

• Terrestrial planets have hard, rocky surfaces you could stand on
• Jovian planets are made of mostly liquid and gas. What we see aren’t hard surfaces, but cloud formations in their atmospheres
• Jovian planets are much larger then the terrestrials!

Other Objects: Asteroids

• Asteroids (minor planets) are found interior to Jupiter’s orbit
• Small rocky objects (largest 900 km)
  • N~100,000’s Big Ones
  • Many more small ones
• Most in the Asteroid Belt
• Trojan Asteroids could be Broken up moons!

Other Objects: Trans-Neptunian

• Trans-Neptunian Objects are found outside the orbit of Neptune
• Pluto is now considered one of these objects
• Pluto’s small size and strange orbit resulted in it’s recent demotion from “planet”
• Objects in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud are tans-Neptunian objects

Oort Cloud

• Defines the outer boundary of our solar system and the gravitational dominance of the Sun!
• These objects are the left over material from the formation of the solar system

LT

 The solar system is a large, mostly empty space

 This tutorial will give you an idea of the size of things

 Sun Size

• pg. 105

The Nebular Hypothesis

 A rotating cloud of gas and dust undergoes gravitational collapse and flattens.

• Cloud composed of ~74% Hydrogen and ~24% Helium  A few trace elements (C,N,O,Be,etc)

Flattening of Rotating Cloud

 Spherically collapsing due to gravity.  The Cloud has an initial rotation  Angular momentum (L): L=mvr  Conservation:  L 1 =L 2  m 1 v 1 r 1 =m 2 v 2 r 2  If r decreases  v increases Initial Rotation

Why Does Everything Rotate and Spin in the

Same Direction?

v smaller r v bigger r v:spin v: revolution Collapse Collapse

The planets formed by the accretion of planetesimals and the accumulation of gases in the solar nebula Iron, Silicon, etc condenses

• Kelvin Temperature scale:
• T(k) = T(C) + 273.
• Defined absolute zero is 0°
• Absolute zero: temperature at which all atomic motion stops!
• Celsius:
• Defined as freezing and boiling of water is 0° and 100 °
• Fahrenheit: based off the freezing and boiling point of salt water???

Accumulation

• Two particles are gravitationally attracted to each other
• Stick together
• Then two more, and so on…

Planetesimals Sweep Up!