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INTRODUCTION TO ASTRONOMY Overview FRONTIERS IN ASTRONOMY PHYS 271 North America • Landsat Satellite Images Earth from SPACE • APOLLO 17 IMAGE Earth and Moon • From Galileo Spacecraft on way to Jupiter Comparison of Earth and Moon • Relative Diameters • Earth ~ 8000 miles, Moon ~ 2160 miles Distance to the Moon • About 240,000 miles (similar to the Diameter of Saturn’s Rings) The Moon • Mare Orientale: a large lunar crater on the East Limb (edge). ~ 700 miles Diameter The Sun • Much larger than the Planets The Sun • The Chromosphere with a large Prominence (~ 864,000 miles in Diameter) The Corona in X-Rays • Active regions (solar activity) The Astronomical Unit • Average distance between Sun and Earth • ~ 150 million Kilometers or 93 million miles Size of the Sun • 109 times the diameter of Earth Relative Size of the Planets • Pluto smaller than the Moon Orbits of the Planets • Eccentricity and inclination of Pluto’s Orbit! The Sky – Celestial Sphere • North and South Celestial Poles • The Celestial Equator Rotation or Spin • Rotation of the Earth - time scale Day • 24 hours with respect to the Sun Rotation of SKY – Star Trails • 23 hours and 56 minutes, diurnal motion Diurnal Motion Near Horizon • Western or Eastern Horizon Circumpolar Stars or constellations • They never set, 23 hours 56 minute clock Revolution • The orbit of the Earth (sky changes) Constellations • Chance alignments in different directions Summer Triangle • Looking in different directions from Sun Winter Constellations • Use your imagination – anthropomorphic Stars very far away • Pleiades (A star cluster size of full Moon) Milky Way – Our Galaxy • Looking toward Andromeda Nebula About 200 billion stars • Some close, some intermediate, some far Andromeda Galaxy • Nearest Major Galaxy – • 2.7 million Light Years distant Clusters of Galaxies • 100s or 1000s of individual galaxies! Giant Elliptical Galaxy Standard Candles • Dominates Centers of most Clusters • Among Brightness Objects we know Clusters more and more remote • Billions of light years distant Hubble Deep Field • Smallest blue objects more than 10 billion light years distant