PHYS 1040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Solar Mass, Gas Giant, Orion Nebula
30 Aug 2016
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Astronomy definition- the study of the heavens: earth, radius: 6378km, distance to sun: 93million miles, 150 millon km (1au) 1 astronomical unit = au: protective magnetic field, protects us from the sun"s radiation. You can see this when it comes down through the magnetic field also knows as the. Ly = the distance light travels in one year : ~10 trillion km. I. e. ~10,000,000,000,000 km or 10x10^12 km: pleiades (in constellation of taurus) Young cluster of hot stars, only 100 million years old. Where stars are born: milky way galaxy. It takes the sun 230 million years to orbit the milky way galaxy. The middle of the milky way galaxy is a supermassive black hole: speed of light. Speed of light = 300,000 km/second or 186,000 miles/second: sirius. It takes 8 years for this stars light to reach the earth, meaning the light from this star that we see at night is actually 8 years old: orion nebula.
