AY 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Comet Nucleus, Electromagnetic Radiation, Sunburn
Document Summary
Our earth is bathed in dangerous radiation from space. Our atmosphere protects us from this radiation: all x-rays and gamma rays are absorbed very high in the atmosphere, ultraviolet light is mostly absorbed by ozone (o3). Some uv still reaches the ground and causes sunburn: due to water vapor and carbon dioxide in the air, the atmosphere blocks mid-ir and far-ir light, atmosphere is transparent to visible light, near-ir, and radio waves. We have seen that different wavelength domains offer information on important types of objects that the optical domain cannot effectively reveal. We need gamma ray, x-ray, uv, and ir telescopes to study these domains: because of the earth"s atmosphere, gamma ray, x-ray, uv, mid-ir, and far-ir observatories must be placed into orbit. Electromagnetic radiation is how the sun"s heat is brought to earth. An atmosphere will scatter blue light more than red light.
