Solar System
http://www.rri.res.in/~biman/cartoon8.JPG
- Began 5 ________ years ago when gas and dust collapsed due to gravity
- Rotation- spins around axis
- ____________- one trip around the sun
Fun Facts about the Planets
Mercury- biggest _____________ difference. 441 to --279 degrees F, one day is ______ of its year, covered in craters
Venus- volcanoes, extreme ______________ effect, rains __________ acid, day is longer than a year and rotates backwards
Earth- well you know about that!
Mars- ________ from iron oxide! Evidence of water erosion. Gigantic face on Mars was thought to be evidence of aliens! The Mars Rovers have yet to find life.
Asteriod Belt- rocky fragments of a failed _________ that circle the sun. Never formed into a planet due to gravitational pull from Jupiter.
Jupiter- failed sun (brown planet), _______ times the mass of all the other planets combined!, belts of colored clouds, day is 9 hours! Great ______Spot- red swirling hurricane.
Saturn- rings are failed moon, so light it ________ on water.
Uranus- ______ planet, rings, rotates sideways!
Neptune- blue planet, moving great dark spot, rings.
Pluto- dwarf planet, not a real planet because small, rocky and has ________ orbit, switches with Neptune for ____th planet.
Planetary Data Sheet- reference tables
Dimensions of the Solar system lab
Terrestrial-
Jovian/ Gas Giant-
Planets were orginally named (in latin) for the days of the week.
Here's a good way to remember the order of planets:
My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us N__________!
Ways to tell a planet from a star:
- Planets appear to move a lot ___________ through the sky than stars.
- Stars twinkle, planets don't
- Some planets can be a lot ___________ than any of the stars (except for our sun!)
New planets outside our solar system are found all the time!
Other Objects in the Solar System
Moons- orbit planets
Comets- dirty ___________
- frozen gas-
- highly tilted orbit
- tail of comet is pushed by solar _________ (charged particles)- pushed opposite the sun
Meteor- rocky particle that enters our atmosphere. A __________ star!
- Meteor shower- Earth hits debris from a ___________
- Meteorite- a meteor on the __________
Asteroid- large meteor that orbits the sun (often comes from the asteroid belt)
How often do meteors and asteroids hit the Earth?
- pea sized rock hits our atm every ___________
- grapefruit size _____ a year
- 1/2 football field size every ________ years
- 1 mile wide- every __00,000 years
- 6 miles wide (size that killed the dinosaurs)- every __00 million years
Historical Astronomy
Ptolemy- 87-150 A.D. Proposed the Geocentric Model for the Solar System- the ________ was at the center of the solar system and every planet and the sun revolved around it!
Planets were believed to travel in perfect _________ around the Earth and to move in retrograde motion- planets drifted ___________ and forwards!
http://www.oswego.edu/~kanbur/a100/lecture4.html
This was the accepted model for 13 centuries and backed by the Church.
Copernicus- 1473-1543 A.D. Proposed the Heliocentric Model for the Solar System which correctly placed the _______ at its center.
Giordano Bruno- 1548-1600 A.D. seized during the Roman inquisition and _________ at the stake for supporting Copernicus' beliefs.
Tycho Brahe- 1546-1601. Impossibly rude man who was an excellent observer of nature. Catalogued hundreds of ________. Lost his ________ in a duel over mathematics!
Johannes Kepler- 1571-1630. Assistant to Brahe and extraordinary mathematician. Proposed the Laws of Planetary Motion.
- Planets move in ellipses- ________ not circles.
- The __________ a planet is to the sun in its orbit the faster it will move
- Between two planets, the _______ planet will orbit fastest.
Galileo Galilei 1564-1642. Father of modern observational astronomy. Challenged the geocentric model. Placed under _________ arrest for heresy. Improved the telescope.
- Saw the moon had ___________- Imperfect sphere!!!
- Discovered four _________ of Jupiter. Everything "should" revolve around the Earth!
- Found the phases of Venus to indicate it revolved around the _______ not the Earth.
- Discovered sun_________ (which caused him to go blind)- Imperfect sphere!!!!!
Isaac Newton- Proposed the mathematical formula for _________.
- The more massive the planets the _________ the gravity between them.
- The _________ the planets, the greater the gravitational pull.
Elvis on other planets!
- Elvis on Mercury- 97 lbs
- Elvis on Venus- 232 lbs
- Elvis on Earth- 255 lbs
- Elvis on Mars- 97 lbs
- Elvis on Jupiter- 648 lbs
- Elvis on Saturn- 275 lbs
- Elvis on Uranus- 232 lbs
- Elvis on Neptune- 303 lbs
- Elvis on Pluto- 13 lbs
- Elvis on the moon- 43 lbs
- Elvis on the SUN- 7,140 lbs
Why Gravity gets so strong near dense objects
Eccentricity- How oval an orbit is. Ranges between 0 and 1.
eccentricity= distance between the foci divided by the length of the major axis
Eccentricity of a circle is _______. The eccentricity of a straight line is 1.
Fun fact: The Earth's orbit is an ellipse. During fall and winter we are closer to the sun so it is shorter in duration than spring and summer.
ELLIPSE lab
The Sun!
The sun contains 99.9% of the mass of the solar system and it is 93 million miles away. If it burned out right NOW it would take us ____ minutes to realize it.
Sun Spots are darked regions of the sun's surface caused by magnetic storms that surge every ____ years!
Northern lights are created when solar wind interacts with our magnetosphere.