ASTR 107 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Kuiper Belt, Astronomical Unit, Milky Way
Document Summary
Part 1 notes overview for where are we?". Distance to sun from the earth is 92 million miles, or commonly known as 1 au (astronomical unit) Light from the sun takes roughly 8 minutes to reach the earth vs to mercury where it takes only 3 minutes but it takes 5 hours and 20 mins to get to pluto. Solar system order (closest to sun to furthest away: mercury 2) venus 3) earth 4) mars (asteroid belt) 5) Jupiter 6) saturn 7) uranas 8) neptune (then pluto although it is no longer a planet, followed by the kuiper. Closet star to our solar system is alpha centauri b, the is near proxima. Cosmic address: earth, solar system, milky way galaxy (mwg), local group, virgo supercluster, the universe. There are 8 classical planets in our solar system, it was 9 before pluto was demoted. A light-year is measured in distance, commonly mistaken for being measured by time.
