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Planets in the solar system
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The Solar System is home to many materials including (Planets, Moons, Stars, Galaxies, Nebula, The Universe, a Solar System, the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, planetesimals, Trans-Neptunian Objects, Comets, Asteroid, a Meteor) including (Meteoroid and Meteorite).
Planets: A planet is mass that is or almost round, that orbits around the sun. It is not a satellite or a moon that orbits another object, it’s the object that gets orbited.There are eight planets that orbit the sun. These planets have formed from smaller rock like matter called planetesimals.
Moons: The moon is seen in the night sky in reason of the light is reflected from the sun. Every 27 days the moon takes its journey around the sun where is goes through the cycles of a new moon,
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The universe contains a large amount of galaxies 10 billion light years across. In the universe there are multiple galaxies stretched across it.
Solar System:The solar system has a collection of nebulas along with multiple planets,moons, stars,comets, meteoroids and asteroids. There are eight main planets in our solar system with a moon or many moons orbiting it. There are other planets in the solar system that are smaller and they’re called dwarf planets, they also have moons in their orbit. They’re stars being formed by nebulas everyday in this solar system along with comets, meteoroids and asteroids charging around, blasting into planets at high speeds.
Asteroid: A small rocky mass that orbits around the sun in the asteroid belt, which is located between the planets Mars and Jupiter. These asteroids mostly stay in this region, but some fly off their track and hit our moon and sometimes even Earth where they enter our atmosphere as a meteor.
Meteor: This is a little rocky body that was once an asteroid. Asteroids are turned into Meteors when they enter Earth’s atmosphere. They’re not much different then
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It was either a piece that survived and flew off during the impact or was the actually Meteor. Anything that you find on the ground that was part of a meteor is called a meteorite.
Comets: A Comet is similar to an asteroid, meteor or meteorite, but is also the opposite. The bodies listed above are made up of rocks and metal, while a comet is made up of ice and dust. The other bodies are located closer to the Sun, around Earth and Mars, while a Comet is much farther away from the Sun and is located in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt, which are past the planet Pluto.
Kuiper Belt: This is another region in the solar system, but this one is located far past Neptune's orbit. Scientist believe that there are comets, asteroids and small pieces of icy rocks that circle on this disk shaped region. There are also, to be believed that there has been orbital periods of less than 200 years or comets.
Oort Cloud: Here is something similar to the Kuiper Belt. The Oort Cloud is another region that is believed to have billions of Comets circling in its orbit unless ift is pulled into the orbit of a passing star. This region is located in the same area as the Kuiper Belt, which is past the orbit of the Dwarf planet
Asteroids are tiny, airless rocky worlds orbiting around the sun and most of them are too small to be called planets, yet, some asteroids are too big too not to be acknowledged and are known as planetoids or minor planets. The mass asteroids are puny but despite their size, asteroids can be deadly. The earth has been hit by many asteroids in the past and can potentially be hit by some again. That's one reason why scientists study asteroids and find ways to avoid them from hitting us or at least predict if they are coming.
Chondrites are the most primitive rocks in the solar system. Chondrites are stony (non-metallic) meteorites that have not been modified due to melting or differentiation of the parent body. Chondrites are formed when dust and small grains that originated from the early solar system accreted to form asteroids. Chondrites represent 86% of meteorites that fall to Earth. An important diagnosing feature of chondrites is the presence of chondrules. Chondrules are millimeter sized round inclusions made primarily of olivine and pyroxene, and chondrules make up 20-80% of the volume of most chondrites. Chondrites are important to geochemistry because chondrites give insight on the composition and age of the early solar system, the presence of water on Earth, and possibly the origin of life.
The Kuiper Belt is an icy-bodied disc shapes area of the Solar System. Kuiper Belt has a circular shape, to be exact, it is a curved plane. It is over 4.5 to 7.4 billion kilometers from Sun. This is roughly 30 to 50 times the distance of Earth from Sun. The Kuiper Belt has been said to resemble the Asteroid Belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. The difference between the Kuiper Belt and the Asteroid Belt is that the bodies are icier due to their distance from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt objects includes Pluto and other comets that orbit beyond Neptune. Most Kuiper Belt objects are made up of frozen volatiles such as methane, water and ammonia. In 1950 astronomer Gerald Kuiper predicted the existence of the Kuiper Belt and the find was named
Most meteors burn up when they enter Earth’s atmosphere. There are a few meteors however, that make it to the surface. The ones that make it to the ground are called meteorites.
Solar nebula is a rotating flattened disk of gas and dust in which the outer part of the disk became planets while the center bulge part became the sun. Its inner part is hot, which is heated by a young sun and due to the impact of the gas falling on the disk during its collapse. However, the outer part is cold and far below the freezing point of water. In the solar nebula, the process of condensation occurs after enough cooling of solar nebula and results in the formation into a disk. Condensation is a process of cooling the gas and its molecules stick together to form liquid or solid particles. Therefore, condensation is the change from gas to liquid. In this process, the gas must cool below a critical temperature. Accretion is the process in which the tiny condensed particles from the nebula begin to stick together to form bigger pieces. Solar nebular theory explains the formation of the solar system. In the solar nebula, tiny grains stuck together and created bigger grains that grew into clumps, possibly held together by electrical forces similar to those that make lint stick to your clothes. Subsequent collisions, if not too violent, allowed these smaller particles to grow into objects ranging in size from millimeters to kilometers. These larger objects are called planetesimals. As planetesimals moved within the disk and collide with one another, planets formed. Because astronomers have no direct way to observe how the Solar System formed, they rely heavily on computer simulations to study that remote time. Computer simulations try to solve Newton’s laws of motion for the complex mix of dust and gas that we believe made up the solar nebula. Merging of the planetesimals increased their mass and thus their gravitational attraction. That, in turn, helped them grow even more massive by drawing planetesimals into clumps or rings around the sun. The process of planets building undergoes consumption of most of the planetesimals. Some survived planetesimals form small moons, asteroids, and comets. The leftover Rocky planetesimals that remained between Jupiter and Mars were stirred by Jupiter’s gravitational force. Therefore, these Rocky planetesimals are unable to assemble into a planet. These planetesimals are known as asteroids. Formation of solar system is explained by solar nebular theory. A rotating flat disk with center bulge is the solar nebula. The outer part of the disk becomes planets and the center bulge becomes the sun.
What is astronomy? Astronomy consist of a lot of things that make up our solar system such as: the nine planets, asteroids, meteorites, the moon and the sun. Astronomy is also a fascinating hobby that can be followed by anyone. You do not need to be, as some people seem to imagine, ‘mathematically-minded’ , in order to start, or even to become a very experienced observer. Yet astronomy is one of the few hobbies where not only can you gain great enjoyment, but if you feel want to can very easily make observations of great scientific value.
The moon is probably the most noticeable object outside of earth atmosphere besides the sun. There are a great number of facts about the moon. Most of these facts include size and distance of the moon compared to the Earth. Our moon's proper name is "Luna". Luna is 238,900 miles away from earth, and 27% smaller than earth. The moon is the most studied object outside of earths atmosphere. Luna is the only naturally made object that humans have set foot on besides earth.
Asteroids can be found orbiting the Sun in a belt between Mars and Jupiter; this is called the Asteroid belt or Main belt. The asteroid belt has been said to probably contain millions of asteroids that are all different. There are more than 20,000 numbered asteroids. Some times asteroids get knocked off the asteroid belt. As asteroids revolve around the Sun in elliptical orbits, Jupiter’s gravity and getting to close to Mars or another asteroid can change an asteroids path, this could send an asteroid out of the asteroid belt and into space across the orbits of other planets. An example of asteroid orbits changing is Mar’s moons Phobos and Deimos. These were asteroids that went to close to Mars and got caught in its orbit.
Whenever we watch movies about space, the movie tends to influence our perspective of what is out there in space and how things work. Because of people’s lack of knowledge, it is easy for them to accept what the movies or pictures present to them. Therefore, there are many misconceptions in astronomy of how things really work out in the universe. In Neil Comens’ book, Heavenly Errors, he pinpoints over 1600 misconceptions! For example, many people have several different theories of how the moon changes shape every night or why the stars twinkle in the night time sky.
Pluto is located 7.5 billion kilometers from Earth and is only over 2,000 km in diameter. Pluto has been labeled both a planet and a dwarf planet over the years. As said by USA Today, “a planet is a celestial body that: is in orbit around the sun, is round or nearly round, and has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit, meaning it is not surrounded by objects of similar size and characteristics.” Pluto only follows two of the three rules of a planet. Pluto crosses over Neptune’s orbit and is near other dwarf planets like it. Even though it breaks one rule it was officially named a dwarf planet in “August 2006”, as stated by the Library of Congress. After this event Pluto still only has one correct classification. Pluto is a planet because
A galaxy, also called a nebula, consists of billions of stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter which are all bound to form a massive cloud in which we live in. Although it cannot be very well explained, dark matter makes up at least 90% of a galaxy’s mass. Galaxies also contain billions upon billions of stars and their diameter can range from 1,500 to 300,000 light years. That’s huge! The Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live in, is one of about 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Our Sun is one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, and our eight planets revolve around this star in only a tiny part of our galaxy. “The Earth’s solar system is believed to exist very close to the Galaxy’s galactic plane, due to the fact that the Milky Way essentially divides the night sky into two virtually equal hemispheres” ("All About the Milky"). It definitely makes people second guess the fact of there being life on other planets.
Our solar system has eight planets, their moons and satellites, and they are all orbiting the Sun. The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto used to be the ninth planet but IAU changed the definition of planet and Pluto did not meet the standards so it is now a Dwarf planet.
One thing us as humans have never been able to fully understand is astronomy. Always having an unexplained mystery, astronomy also has served as a way to keep time and predict the future. The word “astronomy” is defined as the study of heavenly bodies, meaning anything in the sky such as stars, galaxies, comets, planets, nebulae, and so on. Many people, if not everyone, is amazed by the night sky on a clear, moonless night.
The Universe is a collection of millions of galaxies and extends beyond human imagination. After the big bang, the universe was found to be composed of radiation and subatomic particles. Information following big bang is arguable on how galaxies formed, that is whether small particles merged to form clusters and eventually galaxies or whether the universe systematized as immense clumps of matter that later fragmented into galaxies (Nasa World book, 2013). A galaxy is a massive area of empty space full of dust, gases (mainly 75% Hydrogen and 25%Helium), atoms, about 100-200 billion stars, interstellar clouds and planets, attracted to the center by gravitational force of attraction. Based on recent research, 170 billion galaxies have been estimated to exist, with only tens of thousands been discovered (Deutsch, 2011).
The bland aquamarine face of Uranus bears witness to the fact that Uranus is enshrouded in clouds. The planet appears to be blue-green because the atmosphere absorbs the, red wavelengths of the visible spectrum, . The uniformity of the planet's appearance confirms that the planet's atmosphere is composed almost solely of one element, methane gas. There is a preponderance of haze, composed of ethane and other hydrocarbon ices high in the stratosphere, and clouds of methane ice low in the troposphere. The cloud particles constantly recycle themselves, first creating then destroying the heaviest crystals. This is an indication that Uranus' atmosphere is still evolving from its formation out of the solar nebula. Because Uranus lies on its side, Uranus has very strange seasons. Motions in the cloud patterns indicate that, like Jupiter and Saturn, the basic meteorology of Uranus can be described as a striped pattern of winds. This means that, even though the pattern is difficult to distinquish, Uranus is striped, just like Jupiter and Saturn.