GE CLST 70A Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Rings Of Saturn, Miscibility, Meteoroid
23 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Solar system survey: patterns of motion, patterns of composition, the small stuff. The first generation of stars in the universe, no rocky planets like earth were made. Rich in molecular ices (water, methane, co2, etc. ) We can take pictures that are direct astronomical evidence supporting nebular theory of star (and planet) formation. Gas and dust from many, many stars: this was about 5 billion years ago, and the universe was already about 8 billion years old and had many, many generations of stardust to work with. Great homogenization process, yet we end up with tremendous diversity in planetary objects. The basic unit is the astronomical unit (au: defined as earth"s average distance from the sun, 1 au = 150,000,000 km = 93,000,000 mi. Almost all planets are orbiting on close to the same plane, which is not far off the sun"s equatorial plane. All the angular momentum is in the planets.
