Thursday, April 22, 2011

The symbol of Eris

Dwarf Planet Eris

Eris

Basic Information

• Names: 2003 UB 313, Eris
• Nickname: Xena
• Named after the Greek godess of discord and strife

Sign

• The sign represents the arms of Eris

Statistics

• Diameter: 2300-2400 km
• Density: 2.3 g/cm3
• Mass: 1.68x10^{22 kg}
• Rotation: about 8h
• Revolution: 557 earth years

The Orbit

• eccentric orbit=the orbit is not a perfect circle
• Eris is about can 96.7 AU from the sun when it is the farthest away (aphelion), and can be 38 AU away from the sun when it is the closest (perihelion).

Climate

• Temperatures: 217°C to -243°C

• The temperatures are very similar to Pluto

Land and Atmosphere

• The atmosphere is frozen to the surface of Eris
• The land is made out of icy frozen rock
• Chemical components: methane, nitrogen, water
• Tholins= cause the reddish color when they get mixed with methane

Location is the Solar System

• Located in the Kuiper Belt
• 3x farther away from Earth than Pluto
• It is the most distant dwarf Planet when it is in its aphelion
• About 96.7 AU (aphelion) from the sun ( 14.60×10⁹ km )
• Perihelion: 38 AU ( 5.64×10^{9 km)}

When discovered and by Who

• Discovered by Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz
• Picture taken in 2003
• Discovered in 2005

Where Discovered

• Discovered in a Palomar Observatory

The Moon

• Name: Dysnomia
• Named after the daughter of Eris ( the demon goddess of lawlessness)
• Nicknamed after Gabrielle

Spacecrafts

• New Horizons
• Send out to find out more about Pluto and the objects beyond it, including the Kuiper Belt
• Expected to arrive at Pluto in 2015

Interesting Facts

• Most Distant Dwarf Planet to orbit the Sun
• Eris is the reason why Pluto is not a Planet anymore (27% more massive)
• The largest dwarf planet in our Solar System
• Smaller than Earths Moon
• Some people associate it with 2012
• The naming of the Dwarf Planet and classifying Pluto as a Dwarf Planet led to a lot of strife, which is why the dwarf planet is now called Eris

Links

Link to Moodle

Link to a video of how Eris might look like

Link to a long talk that Mike Brown gives about the dwarf planets

Tuesday, April 19th - Uranus

Planet Uranus

One of the signs of Uranus

Uranus Facts

Basics:

• Uranus has two signs
• 7th planet from the Sun
• One of the four Gas Giants
• Discovered in 1781 - William Herschel
• Named after the Greek God of the Heavens (1850)
• Tilted planet - 98 degree axis tilt (rolls on its side) 
• Blue-green in color - due to methane in atmosphere

Revolution of Uranus around Sun

Numbers:

• Rotation = -17.24 Earth hours 
• Retrograde = rotates clockwise (backwards from most things in Universe!)
• Revolution = 85 Earth years
• Rolls like a barrel around the Sun due to axis tilt
• Orbit = 2,870,990,000 km (~19 AU)
• Diameter = 51,118 km - 3rd largest planet
• Mass = 8.683e25 kg
• e = exponent (times 10 to the 25th power)
• Density = 1,270 kg per meters cubed
• Less gravity than Earth!

2nd Sign of Uranus

Atmosphere/Land/Climate:

• Composed of rock & various ices (Hydrogen, Helium & Methane)
• Does not have a rocky core - WEIRD!
•  Interior is Methane Ice
•  Atmosphere = 83% H; 15% He, 2% = Methane
•  Methane reflects blue-green color!
• Goes through seasons
• Winds "stripe" the planet
• Methane "smog" on pole not facing Sun
• Has HUGE wind storms when poles switch!

Rings & Moons of Uranus

Rings:

• Has 13 rings made of dark, rocky material
• Pieces can be up to 10 km in diameter
• 1st rings discovered after Saturn
• very faint - called a ring "arc"

Some of Uranus' Moons

Moons:

• 27 Moons
• Named after Shakespeare and Alexander Pope characters
• "Icy Moons" - no atmosphere & no magnetosphere
• Miranda, Oberon, Puck, Juliet, Titania, etc.

Pathway of Voyager 2

Spacecrafts:

• Voyager 2 - Fly-by, January 24th, 1986 - the only one!!!!!
• Still going and reporting back to NASA!
• Future - JUNO Spacecraft - visiting Jupiter, Uranus & Neptune
• Launches August 2011

Uranus - 7th Planet from Sun

Interesting Facts:

• One - First named Georgium Sidus for the King of England!
• Two -  Moon Miranda has the largest canyon in the solar system - would take 12 minutes for us to fall at a rate of 200 kmph!
• Three - Larger in diameter, but smaller in mass than Neptune!
• Four - Magnetic field not centered on planet!
• Five - 1st planet to be discovered with a telescope & math!
• Six - Poles face Sun, but receive less solar radiation from the Sun than the equator!

Uranus without Rings

 Cool Links:

• Moodle
• My Uranus Notes
•  Cool Basic Uranus YouTube Link
• Uranus Basics
• Animation of Voyager 2 Fly-By (NASA)  
• Uranus - The Magician by Gustav Holst

Pluto

• Remember that all the data is approximated, because no spacecraft has been able to reach this dwarf planet yet.
  


• °° - interesting fact

PLUTO

Name:

• Pluto's name comes from the god of the underworld, because the dwarf planet always appeared very dark.
  


• The name was proposed by an eleven year-old girl, Venetia Burney.

Statistics:

• Mass: (metric) 13,090,000,000,000,000,000,000
  


• Diameter: 2,284 km
  


• Density: 2.05 g/cm^3
  


• Revolution: 247.7 years
  


• Rotation: 6.3872 (retrograde)
  


• Distance from Sun: 5,913,520,000 km
  

• ** retrograde: backward movement of celestial bodies in an orbit.
  

Climate:

• Extremely low temperature; about 44° K and -229° C



• Pluto's atmosphere usually measures -180° C

• Pluto goes through a seasonal cycle. Astronomers began to think so when they compared two pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, one in 1994 and the other in 2002-3 . The pictures who an evident change on the surface of this dwarf planet. Pluto goes through a seasonal cycle every 247.7 years, which is its revolution period.
  

Land/Atmosphere:

• Pluto is mostly made out of water ice, while its core is made out of iron and rock.
  


• Pluto's atmosphere is 90% Nitrogen (N) and 10% other complex molecules.
  


• °° Pluto's atmosphere is odd, because whenever Pluto (throughout its orbit) gets far from the Sun, the atmosphere actually freezes and falls on the planet (as solid ice). When, though, Pluto gets closer to the Sun in its orbit, the atmosphere turns into Nitrogen and other molecules again. This doesn't happen on any other planet.

Discovery:

• In 1909, Percival Lowell believed that a ninth planet in the Solar System existed. He build a whole observatory (Lowell Observatory) just to find what he temporarily called 'Planet X'. In 1915, Lowell captured a few pictures that actually caught Planet X, but he didn't notice. He died the year after, without having reached his goal.



• Fifteen years after Lowell's death, a 26 year-old, Clyde Tombaugh, was hired at the Lowell Observatory to find out if a ninth planet existed in the Solar System or if it was all Lowell's imagination.
  


• Tombaugh found the pictures taken of Planet X, published them and also understood that Lowell hadn't seen Planet X because he didn't think that it was going to be as small as it was.
  


• Once the planet was discovered, Clyde Tombaugh was sent many e-mails proposing names for the ninth planet. He accepted Pluto.
  

Moons:

• Charon, Nix and Hydra.
  


• Charon is the biggest moon of Pluto, it is very close to it and very similar. It was discovered in 1978 by James Christy. What is interesting about this moon and Pluto is that these two are so close that they share an atmosphere, they both orbit around each other and they are considered to be a double planet.
  


• A double planet is a planet that was brutally hit by an object and split into two celestial bodies. Astronomers belive that Pluto was hit by an object and so Charon was created.
  


• Charon was named after the man that brings souls in a boat underground to the river of dead people's souls.



• Nix and Hydra were discovered in 2005. It was hard for astronomers to spot them because of their very small size. Before, when they weren't sure these two moons existed, astronomers named them S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2.

Spacecrafts:

• New Horizons was launched in 2006 and programmed to arrive to Pluto in July 2015. Its mission is to capture close.up images of Pluto and its moons, but especially exploring the Kuiper Belt.
  

Location:

• 5.9 billion km far from the Sun



• 39.48 AU far from the Sun
  


• Located in the Kuiper Belt

Planet to dwarf planet:

• This is a video that explains what a planet and a dwarf planet are. Only watch from the points 2.40 to 3.50.
  


• In order for a celestial body to be a planet, it has to have a cleared neighborhood, has to orbit around a star, and have enough gravity to pull itself to a nearly round shape.



• Instead, a dwarf planet does not have a cleared neighborhood, orbits around a star, has enough gravity to pull itself to a nearlt round shape, and finally is not a moon.



• What made astronomers wonder about Pluto being a planet was the discovery of another celestial body behind Pluto, Eris, 25% bigger than Pluto and made of the same matter. This made astronomers wonder weather there were ten planets in the Solar System or these two planets were actually part of the Kuiper Belt. Since neither of them didn't have a cleared neighborhood, they are not considered planets anymore.
  

Other facts:

• Throughout its orbit, Pluto gets closer to the Sun.



• When an object orbiting around Pluto aligns with the Sun, it blocks light to Pluto. This is an eclipse-like event happening on Pluto.
  


• Even though Pluto is made out of ice and rock, it is reddish-brown.
  


• Pluto might have been a moon of Neptune.

Jupiter

Jupiter,

or also one of the Jovian planets (gas planets) in our solar system.

Name:

It got its name from the Roman god Jupiter, who also is Zeus in the Greek Mythology. He is the king of all the gods, the strongest, smartest, etc. that can be referred to Jupiter’s size as the biggest planet in our solar system. Also Jupiter is the son of Cronus (Saturn).

The sign stands for the Greek letter “zeta” or “Z” in English which stands for Zeus who is also known as Jupiter.

Discovery:

It was discovered by the Babylonians, but because Jupiter is visible to the naked eye on the night sky, it has been visible to everyone and everything.

Size:

• Diameter: 142,984 km. (11.2 times bigger than Earth’s)
• Mass: 1.9 x 10e27 (317 times more than Earth)
• Density: 1.326 g/cm³ (that means that in case you would put Jupiter in a huge bowl of water it would slowly sink.)

Rotation & Revolution:

Rotation: 9h 58m

Revolution: 11.78 Earth years.

Location:

• 5^th planet away from the sun
• 5.2 AU (777909600.9 km)

Land:

• Never solid (gas planet)
• The „sea is out of liquid hydrogen
• 71% hydrogen 24% helium
• About -110 degrees Celsius
• Core is probably solid iron (reason for its enormous magnetic field)

Atmosphere:

· 75% hydrogen 24% helium

· Clouds are out of crystal ammoniac

The Great Red Spot (GRS):

• Discovered in 17th century (350 years!!!)
• High pressured hurricane
• Average wind speed of about 640km/h.
• Twice as big as Earth
• Oval shaped
• 12000km x 25000km area
• more storms (e.g. Little Red Spot)

Rings:

Jupiter has one ring, which has 3-4 parts (Halo Ring, Main Ring, Gossamer Ring/s) depending on your opinion. Some scientists define the Gossamer Ring as one ring others split it up into the Amalthean Gossamer Ring and the Thebe Gossamer Ring. As shown in the picture there are 4 moons orbiting in the ring.

Moons:

• 63 moons (named after Zeus’s lovers)
• 4 Galilean moons (Io, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede)

Io	Europa	Callisto	Ganymede
Most active volcanic body in our solar system (100x more than Earths)	Has a 100km deep water-ocean under its surface.	Has very old craters, that give details about the earlier universe	Biggest moon in the solar system (bigger than Mercury)

Important Missions:

- Pioneer 10 (first to pass the Asteroid belt, Jupiter Flyby, still travelling)

- Pioneer 11 (2^nd to pass the Asteroid belt, Jupiter Flyby, helped to study the moons, magnetic field, atmosphere, broke but still travelling)

- Voyager 2 ( Jupiter Flyby, discovered the rings of Jupiter)

- Galileo (Jupiter orbiting mission, first to put a probe into an outer planets atmosphere, helped to observe the atmosphere Ingredients and then the Galilean Moons in more detail.

- JUNO (Launching in August this year, going to polar orbit Jupiter)

If you would like a copy of my notes they can be found here.

This video shows Jupiter, recorded by a webcam at the Telescope Dobson 6

Real Jupiter (Dobson 6)

Neptune

Hello everyone, the topic I chose to present on was the planet Neptune.

Basic Information

->Eight and farthe

st planet from the Sun

l->4,504,000,000 km away from the Sun

l->Fourth largest planet in diameter (49,532 km equatorial)

l ->Third largest planet by mass (1.024726 kg)

l->Revolution: 165 Earth years (a year)

l->Rotation: 16.1 Earth hours (a

day)

l->Surface temperature: -214 degrees Celsius

l->Density: 1.638 g/cm3

Its name comes from the Roman god of the sea, Neptune. Its symbol is Neptune's trident as you can see below.

Discovery and Observations

l->Discovered by Johann Gottfried and Louis d’Arrest on the 23rd of September 1846

l->Earlier predictions were made by John Couch and Le Verrier because Neptune’s gravitational field disturbed Uranus’s orbit

l->Voyager 2 on the 25th of August 1989

l->Ground based observations

l->Hubble Space Telescope observations

Ingredients

Moons and Rings

l4 rings

l

Adams, Le Verrier, Galle, Lassel

l

Unknown composure

Neptune has 13 known moons; 7 small named ones, Triton, and 5 other ones.

TRITON

l->Named after the god of the sea in Greek mythology, it is the son of Poseidon (Son of Neptune in roman mythology)

l->354,760km away from Neptune

l->2700 km in diameter

l->2.1422 kg

l->Orbits backwards or clockwise in comparison to the other moons(retrogade)

l->Surface temp. -235 degrees Celsius

l->Discovered in 1846

NEREID

l->5,513,400 km away from Neptune

l->340km in diameter

l->Unknown mass

l->Named after the sea nymphs

l->Discovered in 1949

PROTEUS

l->116,600 km away from Neptune

l->418km in diameter

l->Unknown mass

l->Named after a sea god that could change his shape at will

l->Non-spherical shaped

l->Discovered in 1989

Interesting Facts

Triton is the coldest known planetary system in our Solar System and has nitrogen ice volcanoes that shoot out ice plumes 20 miles high.

Neptune has the fastest winds in the Solar System (2000 km/hr), it also has the closest gravitational pull in comparison to our Earth (1.17G) and Pluto may have been a moon of Neptune's that escaped its gravitational pull.

The Great Dark Spot and Scooter

l->The Great Dark Spot is a hole in the methane cloud deck of Neptune (changes size and shape) , a storm

l->It can fit one earth inside of it

l->Moves 300 meters/second

l->Winds around it are the fastest in the solar system (2000 km/hr)

l->Discovered by Voyager 2

l->Scooter is an irregular shaped cloud

l->Probably a plume rising in lower atmosphere

l->Flies eastward around the circumference of the planet every 16 hours

Asteroids

Main Asteroid Belt
Asteroids are rocky minor planets that orbit the Sun, distinguished from comets by their lack of a tail (comet tails are composed of ice and frozen gases that melt when near the Sun, producing the tail we see, asteroids lack these).

The belt was formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago, along with the Sun and other planets.

• It's located between Mars and Jupiter.



• It hasn't condensed into a single planet because of the competing gravitational pull of Jupiter and the Sun.



• Asteroids inside the belt range in size from 1 km across to 959 km (dwarf planet Ceres).\



• There are ~440,000 documented asteroids within the belt, though the belt contains millions of others.



• The total mass of asteroids in the belt is estimated to be less than the Earth's Moon.



• 92.8% of asteroids within the belt are composed of stony materials (olivine, pyroxene, etc), and 5.7% are mainly iron and nickel.



• The first named dwarf planet, Ceres, was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801.

Ida 243:
Ida is an asteroid in the Main Asteroid Belt, discovered by the Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa in 1884. It is the first asteroid to be discovered to have a natural satellite (Dactyl), and the second asteroid to be observed by a satellite.

• 
  
  Ida and its satellite, Dactyl
  
  Ida was named for a nymph who tended the god Jupiter (Greek Zeus) when he was young, it's also the name of a mountain on Crete where Jupiter was raised.



• Ida is a member of the Koronis family of asteroids, meaning it originated from a single large asteroid impact.
  


• Ida has a mass of 1334 kg.



• It's 428,000,000 km from the Sun.



• One day is 4 hours and 39 minutes.



• Its average diameter is 31.4 km.


• Ida has a temperature of -73 C.


• Ida is a chrondrite asteroid, meaning that it's made mainly of dust from the early Solar System, composed of olivine, pyroxene, etc.



• Ida is covered with 50-100 m of regolith (pulverized rock from other asteroid impacts) over all of its surface.


• Observed by the Galileo spacecraft in August 28, 1993, the second asteroid to have been observed at such a close distance (only 10,760 km away from Ida and 10,870 km from Dactyl)




• Dactyl is named for the Dactyli, which were mythical residents of Mount Ida.



• Dactyl orbits Ida at 90 km/h, has a size of 2.688 km3, and has the same temperature as Ida.

Vesta:

Vesta is a 'minor planet' in the main belt, it has a c0mposition similar to Mars or Earth, and has differentiated, or undergone the process where dense materials sink to the core and lighter materials rise to the top.

• Vesta was discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on March 29h, 1807.



• It is composed of 86% rocky materials (olivine, pyroxene, feldspar) and 14% iron.



• Has a diameter or 525 km.



• Its day is 5 hours and 20.5 minutes.



• Vesta has a mass of 78,800,000 kg, which is 279 times smaller than the Earth's Moon.

Near Vesta's South Pole, there is a 20-30 km wide and 20-30 km deep crater, which is the source of Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite (HED) meteorites on Earth.

Vesta is visible to the naked eye from Earth.

Vesta's symbol is

99942 Apophis:

Apophis is one of the few asteroids that have been discovered on a collision course with Earth, and one of the even fewer that could cause total extinction on Earth.

Discovered on June 19th, 2004, at the Kitt Peak Observatory.

• It was then determined to have a 2.7% chance of impact with Earth in 2029.



• Apophis is 210-330 km in diameter.



• It was detected at 27 - 40 million km from the Earth.



• It was later determined that Apophis posed only a 1/45,000 chance of impact on April 13th, 2036.

Dawn Program:

The Dawn Program is dedicated to learning more about the origins of the Solar System and how planets and other objects were created. Dawn itself is a satellite that is exploring objects in the main asteroid belt, namely Vesta and Ceres. It has nearly arrived, and will begin its observations of Vesta on August 5-7th of this year.

Kuiper Belt:

The Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt, w/ Relative Scale

The Kuiper Belt is a vast, disc-shaped region beyond the orbit of Neptune that produces short-period comets, or comets that take less than 200 years to orbit around the Sun.

• Contains hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 100 km across, and approximately a trillion comets.



• Extends from 30-55 AU from the Sun.

The Oort Cloud:

The Oort Cloud is a region of space proposed by Jan Oort in 1950, it is supposedly a vast outer shell of icy bodies and comets, and marks the edge of the Solar System and the Sun's gravitational influence.

• Contains 100,000,000,000 to 2,000,000,000,000 icy bodies.



• Extends 5,000 to 100,000 AU from the Sun.



• The Oort Cloud produces long-period comets, 0r comets that take more than 200 years to orbit. Gravitational interaction with the Milky Way dislodges these into the inner Solar System.

All note sheets and the Moodle instructions can be found here.