PHYSICS 20B Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Hubble Space Telescope, W. M. Keck Observatory, Sulfur
Lecture 5
Exploring the Cosmic Landscape
● “The Sun’s 8 planets all orbit in the same sense as Earth”
○ This means that every planet has an elliptical orbit, and they all rotate around the
sun in the same direction.
● The way we measure the distance between the planets and the Sun is in Astronomical
Units (AU)
○ An AU is the distance between Earth and Sun
■ This means that all AU measurements are comparison to the distance of
the Earth and Sun
● We know that in the present day, the planet Mars is a barren desert, however, was Mars
always like this?
○ NASA has had 7 landing sites on Mars to gather more information on the barren
dry planet
○ The mission is to find out is, Is Mars’ surface a potential habitat for life, past or
present?
■ The equipment they land on mars contains, Cameras, Geological tools
(drills), and Laser to vaporize layer of rocks
○ Currently, there are finding that does suggest that Mars likely habitable in the
past
■ The findings are ancient rivers and streams (water flow marking) and that
water was non-acidic
○ The key elements for life in the present is Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen,
Sulfur, and Phosphorus
○ Through measurements of hydrogen content of the soil, we can concur that water
lurks just below the Martian surface today, in the Ice state.
○ There is evidence that 1-2 billion years ago, large seas existed on the planet,
which means there was a point in time where Mars was once warmer and wetter.
● Jupiter
○ Jupiter has a dense cover of clouds, covering the entire planet, making it difficult
to view the landscape.
○ NASA has built a spacecraft specifically designed to view below Jupiter’s dense
cover of clouds
○ The spacecraft is named Juno, in accordance to the Roman goddess, Jupiter’s
wife
○ Astronomers always knew that Jupiter had stripe-like patterns, however, thanks
to Juno, the spacecraft revealed that the stripes actually run much deeper into
the atmosphere than previously thought
● Pluto
○ NASA wanted to gather more information on the remarkable dwarf planet Pluto.
○ Pluto is 32.41 AU away from Earth.
○ NASA built another spacecraft to go on a 10 year journey, to observe Pluto, this
spacecraft was named New Horizons
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
The sun"s 8 planets all orbit in the same sense as earth . This means that every planet has an elliptical orbit, and they all rotate around the sun in the same direction. The way we measure the distance between the planets and the sun is in astronomical. An au is the distance between earth and sun. This means that all au measurements are comparison to the distance of. Nasa has had 7 landing sites on mars to gather more information on the barren dry planet. The equipment they land on mars contains, cameras, geological tools (drills), and laser to vaporize layer of rocks. Currently, there are finding that does suggest that mars likely habitable in the past. The findings are ancient rivers and streams (water flow marking) and that water was non-acidic. The key elements for life in the present is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen,
