“You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars”

ASTRONOMY

TELESCOPES

• Powers

• Magnifying

• Light gathering

• Resolving

• Types of mounting

• Altitude Azimuthal

• Equatorial

TYPES

• Refracting

• Uses a lens

• Reflecting

• Uses a mirror

DISTANCES

• 150 Million Kilometers = Distance of the earth from the sun

• Parsec – Parallax arc of 1 second

• Light second – 300 Thousand Kilometers

• Light-year – 9.5 Trillion Kilometers

• Nearest star to the solar system - 4 light-years, Proxima Centauri

• Andromeda - 2.3 million light-years away

• no star whose parallax is 1 arc second

1 AU

PARALLAX

PLANETS

• Planet - originally meant "wanderer"

• A planet is a celestial body that

• Is in orbit around the sun

• Has cleared its orbit

• Is heavy enough for its self-gravity to make its shape round

MERCURY

• Caloris Basin- biggest crater in Solar System

• marked with ray craters

• no atmosphere

• 88 earth days = 1 Mercurial year

VENUS

• dense atmosphere, 97% CO2

• Aphrodite Terra - As big as Africa

• Ishtar Terra - north pole

• Maxwell Montes - biggest mountain

• Sapas Mons - largest volcano

• only planet going clockwise

• brightest

MARS

• Polar Caps - Water ice present

• Iron-rich soil

• Valles Maroneris - huge canyon

• Olympus Mons - largest volcano in the solar system

• Utopis Basin

• Hellas Basin - largest basin in mars

• Argyre basin

• Moons

• Phobos (bigger)

• Deimos

JUPITER

• Great red spot-hurricane

• The size of 3 earths

• Has been there for 400 yrs.

• zones (light stripes) and belts (dark stripes)

• 3 sections of rings

• Moons (63 moons)

• Europa (mostly ice),

• Callisto (bombarded by asteroids),

• Io (most volcanically active body in SS)

• Ganyemede (largest)

SATURN

• 7 sections of rings

• windiest planet

• Moons (52)-

• Janus and Epimetheus

• Mimas

• Enceladus (ice volcanoes)

• Dione

• Tethys

• Titan

URANUS

• Poles receive more energy from sun than the equator because the south pole is pointed almost directly at sun

• 11 known rings

• Moons (27)

• Miranda (smallest)

• Ariel

• Umbriel

• Oberon

• Titania

• William Herschel (discoverer) wanted to name it Georgian Sidus

NEPTUNE

• Great DARK spot-hole

• dissapeared in 1994

• Rings - dust-sized grains

• Moons (13)

• Nereid (captured asteriod)

• Triton

DWARF PLANET

Is a celestial body in direct orbit of the Sun that is massive enough that its shape is controlled by gravitational rather than mechanical forces (and thus an ellipsoid in shape), but has not cleared its neighboring region of other objects.

ASTEROIDS

• 6282 Edwelda

• 12088 Maclintal

• 12522 Rara

• 13241 Biyo

• 4866 Badillo

• 6636 Kintanar

• Miguel Arnold Reyes *Pending asteroid