AST101H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Aerogel, Oort Cloud, Solar Wind

• School: UTSG
• Department: Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Course: AST101H1
• Professor: Bryan Gaensler

Document Summary

At first glance, looks like the moon or mercury. Still active after a meteor strike 34 million years ago. A 9. 5 year trip to pluto, travelling at 50,000 km/hr. Short amount of time to take pictures, cannot stop. Mountains as tall as rockies, probably made of water ice. Compared to pluto, charon is very large for a moon. Water ice is strong --> make a crater and it will stay, won"t melt or reshape. A huge collision made a crater nearly the size of vesta. Likely melted most of vesta --> why it is the way it is. This must have thrown out lots of rock shards. Nickel-iron core, mantle, and crust --> just like moon, mercury, earth, venus . Over 1 million asteroids larger than 1km in diameter. Orbit the sun in the same direction as the planets. Some meteorites are parts of other bodes that were thrown off in collisions.