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A Tour of Our Neighborhood.
Taking a closer look at what is REALLY out there in our solar system.
The Planets
The Moons
Mars’ Moons
Jupiter’s Moons
Saturn’s Moons
Uranus’ Moons
Neptune’s Moon Triton
Moon Counts as of 2010:
• Mercury – 0
• Venus – 0
• Earth – 1
• Mars – 2
• Jupiter – 63
• Saturn – 60
• Uranus – 27
• Neptune - 13
Pluto and the Dwarf Planets
Definition of a dwarf planet:
• is in orbit around the Sun • has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to
overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape
• has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit
• is not a satellite
Ceres
Eris
Makemake
Haumea
Pluto
Dwarf Planet Moons
Eris and Dysnomia
Dysnomia
Haumea and
Namaka & Hi’aka
Small Solar System Bodies
• Asteroids
• Trans-Neptunian Objects
• Comets
Asteroids
Asteroids are small rocky bodies that are usually very irregularly shaped that orbit the Sun.
The Asteroid Belt
Near Earth Asteroids
Trojan Asteroids
Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune all have trojan asteroids around them.
Centaurs
2004 VP112
2005 UN524
Meteoroids, Meteors and Meteorites•Meteoroids are chunks of rock out in space. They are about the size of a boulder or smaller. Not quite big enough to be an asteroid, a new name is given to these objects.
•Meteors are the flash of light that you see streaking across the sky as a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
•Meteorites is what’s left of the meteor when it hits the surface of the Earth. If you can pick it up it’s a meteorite.
Small Solar System Bodies
• Asteroids
• Trans-Neptunian Objects
• Comets
Trans-Neptunian Objects
A Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) is any object with an orbit outside of Neptune’s orbit. There are 3 areas of TNO’s and they are the Kupier Belt, Scattered Disk and Oort Cloud.
Small Solar System Bodies
• Asteroids
• Trans-Neptunian Objects
• Comets
CometsA comet is a asteroid like object, but made up of ice and rock. It orbits the sun and will exhibit a coma and/or a tail which are from solar radiation heating up the comet.
What makes up a comet
Comet nucleus of Wild 2
Where do comets come from?
Small Solar System Bodies
• Asteroids
• Trans-Neptunian Objects
• Comets
How do we know about these?
The main way that most of these objects have been discovered is just by taking lots of pictures of the sky, lining up the images, and then looking for any moving objects.
Planets
Moons
Dwarf planets and their moons
CometsTrans-Neptunian
Objects
Asteroids
