Transcript The Center of It All

The Center of It All
The Sun
The Sun’s distance from the Earth is 150 million
km (93 million miles)
The Sun
 http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science
/space/solar-system/sun-article/
Fun Facts
 The sun in the largest object on the solar system.
 Approximately 109 planet Earths would fit on the
surface of the sun and more than one million
planets Earths would fit inside the sun.
 The sun is often personified in mythologies:
Greeks call is Helios and the Romans call it Sol. In
Japan it is called Amaterasu.
 The sun is 70 % hydrogen, 28% helium by
everything else amounts to less than 2%.
 The sun converts hydrogen to helium in its core.
The Sun is recognized as
having the largest mass in
our Solar System.
 Approximately every 11 years, the sun reverses its
overall magnetic polarity: its north magnetic pole
becomes a south pole, and vice versa.
 The sun rotates on its axis once every 25.38 Earth
days or 609.12 hours.
 A person weighing 150 pounds on Earth would
weigh 4,200 pounds on the sun because the
sun’s gravity is 28 times that of Earth.
Solar Flares and Solar Wind
 Solar flares are jets of particles that burst from the
sun and can disrupt satellite communications
and knock out electricity on Earth.
 The sun radiates heat and a steady stream of
charged particles known as the solar wind, which
blows about 280 miles (450 kilometers) per
second throughout the solar system.
Our Solar System
Comets
 They have tails that can stretch for millions of Kilometers
 Sometimes called dirty snowballs
 Comets are small, icy rock bodies that did not get incorporated
into the Sun or the planets. They comprise of a nucleus, coma,
hydrogen cloud, dust tail, and ion tail.
 Comets are spectacular sights in the night sky.
 Comets have orbits that bring them close to the sun, then out to
the far ends of the system and back.
 One famous comet is Halley’s Comet
 Also called long-haired stars
 As a comet passes closer to the sun, it heats the ice and the gases
released make the tail that is seen.
Asteroids
 These are rocky bodies that orbit the sun
 Irregular in shape
 They can be all sizes
 The smallest size is the size of a pebble
 Most orbit the sun between Jupiter and Mars
 Asteroids that pass close to Earth are called
NEO’s or Near Earth Objects.
Asteroids Continued
 Asteroids
 Asteroids have hit every planet in our solar
system. Most space rocks that hit Earth burn up or
slow down enough not to cause serious damage.
Evidence of what happens when they don't can
be seen at Barringer Crater in Arizona - a giant
hole almost 1.6 km (1 mile) across and 175 meters
(570 feet) deep.
Meteors
 Often called shooting stars
 Created by tiny particles the size of a grain of
sand
 Most burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, sometimes
they are large enough to hit the Earth’s surface
before completely burning up. These are called
meteorites- they are the surviving meteors.
 Meteroid is when a meteor travels through Earth’s
atmosphere(while it is burning up)
Dwarf Planets
 Pluto, Ceres and Eres are considered dwarf
Planets in our solar system
 dwarf planets lack the gravitational muscle to
sweep up or scatter objects near their orbits.
 They end up orbiting the sun in zones of similar
objects such as the asteroid and Kuiper belts
 They are not a moon
 Ceres, Eres and Pluto are dwarf planets in our
solar system
Dwarf Planet Eres- Orbit
Terrestrial Planets
 Terrestrial planet is a planet which has solid
surfaces and is primarily composed of silicate
racks and/or metals. There are 4 known terrestrial
planets in our solar system – Mercury, Venus,
Earth and Mars, which are all inner planets and
one terrestrial dwarf planet, Ceres, located in the
asteroid belt.
Mercury
First planet from the sun
 Mercury is only slightly larger than Earth's Moon.
 Mercury has very little atmosphere to stop impacts
 covered with craters
 Mercury's dayside is super-heated by the sun, but at night
temperatures drop hundreds of degrees below freezing
 Ice may even exist in craters
 Mercury's egg-shaped orbit takes it around the sun every 88
days
 Extreme surface temperatures
 Has no moons
Venus
 2nd planet from the sun
 Very thick atmosphere of Carbon Dioxide
 Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system due
to the greenhouse effect
 Venus has no moons
 It is always cloudy on Venus
 Similar to the size of Earth
 Has no moons
Earth
 Third planet from the sun
 Small, rocky planet
 Earth is about 4.5 billion years old
 Made up of water and land masses called continents
 Frozen icecaps at its polar regions
 Earth has a protective atmosphere composed of
predominately nitrogen and oxygen
 Has a natural magnetic field which helps shield Earth
from harmful solar radiation
 Earth has one moon
Mars
 Fourth planet from the sun
 Half the diameter of Earth
 Very thin atmosphere which makes it a cold planet
 Mars has two moons
Gas Giants/Ice Giants
 Sometimes called Jovian- Jupiter like planets
 Gas Giants/Ice Giants have many moons that
orbit them.
 As these planets grew in the early solar system,
they were able to capture objects with their
large gravitational fields.
Jupiter
 Has 50 known moons
 Fifth planet from the sun
 Largest planet in the solar system
 300 times larger than Earth
 Giant ball of liquid hydrogen and helium
 Average temperature is -153 degrees Celsius
 One of the Gas Giants
Saturn
 Sixth planet from the sun
 Gas Giant with temperatures as low as -185
degrees Celsius
 Has 52 known moons
 Composed of hydrogen and helium
 Saturn has a huge system of rings made of
chunks of ice and rock
Uranus
 Seventh planet from the sun
 Considered an Ice Giant
 Has 27 known moons
 Uranus' blue-green color is the result of atmospheric
methane, made of hydrogen and methane
 Smallest of the Gas Giants, it is only 4x the diameter of Earth
 Temperature is around -214 degrees Celsius
 It has ten thin rings going around it
Neptune
 Eighth planet from the sun and last Gas Giant/Ice giant
 Considered an Ice Giant
 Has 13 known moons
 The ice giant Neptune was the first planet located through
mathematical predictions rather than through regular
observations of the sky. (Galileo had recorded it as a fixed
star during observations with his small telescope in 1612 and
1613.)
 Neptune orbits the sun once every 165 years
 Temperature -225 degrees Celsius
Neptune
 Interestingly, the unusual elliptical orbit of the
dwarf planet Pluto brings Pluto inside Neptune's
orbit for a 20-year period out of every 248 Earth
years
 Neptune's blue color is the result of methane in
the atmosphere
 Neptune is a little smaller than Uranus
Significant Dates
 Significant Dates
Huygens' image of Titan surface. The rocks are about the size of pebbles.
 1610: Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius independently discover four moons
orbiting Jupiter. The moons are known as the Galilean satellites in honor of
Galileo's discovery, which also confirms the planets in our solar system orbit
the sun.
 1877: Asaph Hall discovers Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos.
 1969: Astronaut Neil Armstrong is the first of 12 men to walk on the surface of
Earth's Moon.
 1980: Voyager 1 instruments detect signs of surface features beneath the
hazy atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
 2005: The European Space Agency's Huygens probe lands on the surface of
Titan. It is the first spacecraft to successfully land on a moon beyond Earth's
own moon.
 2000-present Using improved ground-based telescopes, orbiting
observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope and spacecraft
observations, scientists find dozens of new moons in our solar system.