Download Linking Asteroids and Meteorites through Reflectance

Astronomy 101
The Solar System
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Tom Burbine
[email protected]
HW #2
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Due day after next clear night
Go to http://www.skyandtelescope.com/
Use interactive sky chart
Print pdf out for particular time, date, and location
Circle what objects you can see in the sky
Presentations for Tuesday
• People
Quiz on Tuesday
• Covers Wednesday’s and Thursday’s class
What is a galaxy?
What is a galaxy?
• Is a massive, gravitationally bound system
consisting of stars, gas and dust, and dark matter.
Galaxies can contain between ten million and a
trillion stars
• Dark matter is matter that does not emit or reflect
enough radiation to be seen, but whose gravitation
effects can be felt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NGC_4414_%28NASA-med%29.jpg
When we are looking at stars or galaxies
• We are looking into the past
Light-year
year is the distance light travels in a year.
Milky Way Galaxy
• Milky Way is 100,000 light years in diameter
• There are ~200 billion stars in the Milky Way (estimates
from 100-400
400 billions stars)
http://www.venusproject.com/ecs/images/photos/galaxy.jpg
What is the Universe?
What is the Universe?
• Sum total of all matter and energy – all galaxies
and everything between them
• Observable universe – portion of the universe that
can be seen from Earth, probably only tiny
portion of the whole universe
~93 billion
Light-years
wide
What causes seasons?
• The tilt of the Earth’s axis relative to the ecliptic
Angular size
• We measure distances
in the sky using angles
• 180o in the observable
sky
More precise distances
• 1 degree = 60 arcminutes (symbol ´)
• 1 arcminute = 60 arcseconds (symbol ´´)
• So something that is 2 degrees, 10 arcminutes, 22
arcseconds would be written as
• 2o 10´ 22´´
Terminology for looking at the sky
Celestial Sphere
• an imaginary sphere of infinite extent on which
all celestial objects appear to lie
• http://www.skyandtelescope.com/s?action=login
Celestial Sphere
What is a constellation?
Constellations
• People refer to constellations as a pattern of stars
• Astronomers refer to constellations as specific
regions of the sky
• In 1928, the IAU (International Astronomical
Union) decided there were 88 constellations
• Many of the constellation names go back
thousands of years
Constellations
• The constellations are totally imaginary things
that poets, farmers and astronomers have made up
over the past 6,000 years (and probably even
more!).
• The real purpose for the constellations is to help
us tell which stars are which, nothing more.
What is this
constellation?
Orion
Bigger the star, the brighter it is
Orion was the son of the god of
the sea, Poseidon and a great hunter.
One story is that he made an enemy of
Hera who sent a scorpion to sting him.
Orion was restored to health by
Ophiuchus, the first doctor of medicine
Another story is that Artemis was
tricked by by Apollo to shoot an arrow
at Orion. When he died, Poseidon
asked Zeus to put him among the stars.
Ursa Major
• Ursa Major, the Great Bear, was identified with a
bear by native American Indians of the
Northeastern United States and the ancient
Greeks.
• The name common in Britain, the Plough,seems
to have a medieval origin,
• Another common name among northern European
cultures is the Wain, a shortened form of wagon
What are the constellations named after
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14 men and women
9 birds
2 insects
19 land animals
10 water creatures
2 centaurs
one head of hair
a serpent
a dragon
a flying horse
a river
29 inanimate objects
• Originally considered part of Leo’s tail
• Named after Queen Berenice
nice II
I of Egypt, wife of Ptolemy II
Euergetes (246 BC - 221 BC)
• Around 243 BC, the king
g undertook
unde
a dangerous expedition
against the Syrians, who had murdered his sister.
• Berenice swore to the goddess Aphrodite to sacrifice her
famous long hair if her husband returned safely.
• He did, she had her hair cut, and placed it in the goddess'
temple.
• By the next morning, the hair had disappeared.
• To appease the furious king
ing and
an queen (and save the lives of
the temple priests), the court
ourt astronomer,
as
Conon, announced
that the offering had so pleased the goddess that she had
placed it in the sky.
• He indicated a cluster of stars that
t at the time were identified
as Leo's tail, but now have been called Berenice's Hair.
Zodiac
• The zodiac is an imaginary belt in the heavens
extending approximately 8 degrees on either side
of the Sun's apparent path (the ecliptic), that
includes the apparent paths of the Moon and the
planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune.
Question:
• Why do all the planets seem to
follow the same path?
Answer:
• The planets, the Earth, and the Sun
all tend to fall in the same plane
called the ecliptic
Why don’t all the constellations have
ancient names?
• Ancient cultures such as the Greeks and
Egyptians could not see the constellations in the
Southern Hemisphere
Question:
• Why is the path of the constellations
on the zodiac not on the celestial
equator?
Answer:
• The rotation axis of the Earth is
inclined with respect to the ecliptic
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Polaris is called the North Star
Brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor.
48th brightest star in the night sky
It is very close to the north celestial pole, making
it the current northern pole star.
• Polaris' altitude, or height above the horizon, is
equal to an observer's latitude.
Long Term Changes
Precession
• Earth precesses like a top
• Precession - phenomenon by which the axis of a
spinning object (e.g. a part of a gyroscope)
"wobbles" when a torque is applied to it
Forces
• For a top, the force is gravity, which is trying to
pull the top down
• For the Earth, the forces are due to the pull of the
Sun and Moon, which is trying to align the
Earth’s axis with the ecliptic
Because of precession
• The position of a star that corresponds to the
North Celestial Pole changes
Models
• When you have a model of how something works,
you should be able to predict what will happen
• If observations do not fit the model, either the
observations or the model is wrong
• The ancient astronomers wanted to predict the
positions of planets in the sky
What did the ancients think
• That the Earth was the center of the universe
• That the celestial sphere was rotating around the
Earth
• However, there was two observations that caused
problems with this idea
– Apparent retrograde motion
– Inability to detect stellar parallax
Greek model
Apparent Retrograde Motion = “backward” motion
Retrograde Motion
Retrograde
• Planet appears to go backwards in its orbit
Stellar Parallax
• Stellar Parallax – The apparent shift in the
position of a nearby star (relative to distant
objects) that occurs as we view the star from
different positions in the Earth’s orbit of the Sun
each year
The distance the star moves is greatly exaggerated in this figure.
Stellar parallax can only be seen by a telescope.
Ancient astronomers could not detect
stellar parallax
• If Earth orbited the Sun, ancient astronomers
believed that they would see differences in
angular separation of stars as the Earth rotated
around the Sun
• Since they saw no changes in angular separation
of the stars, they assumed the Earth was the center
of the universe
• They could not fathom that stars are so far away
that stellar parallax is undetectable by the human
eye
Ptolemy’s (100-170
(100
AD)
Model of the Universe
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)
(1473
• Copernicus came up with a model that the Earth
revolves around the Sun
• Similar to what Aristarchus (310 – 230 BC)
thought 2000 years before
• However, Copernicus’ models did not match
observations since he wanted everything to
arouind in perfect circles
• http://www.hulu.com/watch/63319/cosmos
http://www.hulu.com/watch/63319/cosmos-theharmony-of-the-worlds#x
worlds#x-0,vepisode,1,0
Any Questions?