ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 33: Solar Wind, Reflectance, Coriolis Force

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy
• Course: ASTR 101
• Professor: Majd Abdelqader

Document Summary

Planetary atmospheres: earth and the other terrestrial worlds http://www. astro. uwo. ca/~basu/teach/ast021/slides/chapter10. pdf. 2/3 of the air is within 2 km. Beyond that it is so think it is basically non-existent. Consists mostly of molecular 77% nitrogen (n2) and 21% oxygen (o2) Gas pressure depends on both density and temperature. Adding air molecules increases the pressure in a balloon. Heating the air also increases the pressure. Pressure and density decrease with altitude because the weight of overlying layers is less. Higher you got the less dense the air is. When you blow more air in the balloon the balloon will expand. There is no boundary of the atmosphere. Most of ea(cid:396)th"s gas is (cid:1005)(cid:1004)(cid:1004)k(cid:373) Visible light passes through atmosphere a(cid:374)d (cid:449)a(cid:396)(cid:373)s pla(cid:374)et"s su(cid:396)fa(cid:272)e. Atmosphere absorbs infrared light from surface, trapping hear. Creates pressure that determines whether liquid water can exist on surface. Can make planetary surfaces warmer through greenhouse effect.