ASTR 151 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Gas Giant, Kuiper Belt, Outer Planets
Document Summary
Bits of asteroids that contain snapshots of solar system formation history. Radioactive dating of meteorites gives us an age of the solar system at about 4. 6 billion years old. Made of ice, rock, and have organics. Very small, and most likely amongst the most primitive and oldest materials in the solar. Dust likely left over from cometary activity. Contains grains formed in our solar system formation process, and a few grains are pre- solar grains. Spectrally determining composition of dust is a direct way to see what our solar system is made out of. Determining size gives us intel on how grains form. Spectrally determining shape gives us the temperature environment and formation method of grains. Except for mercury, all planetary orbits are nearly circular, and lie on the same plane: drawn looking down onto the north pole of earth, all orbits in same direction. Two major types: terrestrial, gas giant.
