ASTRO-110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Protoplanetary Disk, Orion Nebula, Kuiper Belt
Document Summary
Jovian planets: larger size and mass lower density (light gases, hydrogen compounds: no solid surface, farther from sun (and farther apart, cooler, rings and many moons, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune pluto. Asteroids look very much like small terrestrial planets (gravity hasn"t made them round) Comets look like pluto which looks like none of the planets. Most are found in the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter. Comets are ice rich and many are found in the kuiper belt beyond neptune"s orbits: even more comets orbit the sun in the distant, spherical region called the. Oort cloud, and only a rare few ever plunge into the inner solar system. Notable exceptions to trends: uranus"s odd tilt (rotates nearly on its side, earth"s relatively large moon. Why believe in the nebular theory? it explains why nearly everything rotates in the same direction the sun, the planets, the planet"s orbits, even the orbits of moons.
