AST101H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Soot, Local Group
15 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Solar system: the collection of eight planets and their moons in orbit around the sun, along with smaller bodies in the form of asteroids, meteoroids, and comets. Universe: all existing matter and space considered as a whole. Our solar system is huge, and the vast majority of it is empty: very small quantities of gas and dust and soot and dirt fill the great quantities of space between the sun, planets, moons, etc. The average distance between the centre of the sun and the centre of the earth is about 150 billion metres (1. 5 x 10 to the power of 11) further than you will ever travel in your life. The distance from the sun to mars is 1. 5 au: the maximum possible distance between the earth and mars is 2. 5 au. A light year is a measure of distance: the nearest star is 41 746 980 000 000 000 m away.
