Astronomy 1021 Lecture 9: Tour of our Solar System
19 Mar 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Eight planets: earth, mars, venus, saturn, mercury, jupiter, uranus, neptune. An even split between terrestrial and gaseous planets (4 vs. 4) Telescopes: hampered by location, cheaper, can be used long term and upgraded, lots of new objects still to find, can study many objects. Spacecrafts: can get closer to solar system objects. In situ measurements: bringing back samples, take a long time to build, launch, travel, very expensive. Cheaper than other missions but less time to gather data. Flies by planets, does not spend time: orbiter spacecrafts. More time to gather data but cannot obtain detailed information about world"s surface. Information can only be observed from space. There is an impact crater on mars from the reconnaissance orbiter. The sun has 99. 9% of the solar system"s mass: most of the other 0. 1% is jupiter (as well as the other planets) Jupiter"s moons: io volcanoes all over, europa possible subsurface ocean, ganymede - largest moon in solar system, callisto.
