ASTRON 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: List Of Nearest Stars And Brown Dwarfs, Oort Cloud, Nachos
14 Aug 2018
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Document Summary
Planets, asteroids, comets, and dust all held together by the sun"s gravity. Everything goes around the sun on elliptical paths called orbits. All orbits lie in the same plane, like peas rolling around on a dinner plate. Asteroids are rocky objects and likely remnants from the formation of planets. Asteroid belt lies between mars and jupiter. Are not dominant mass in its orbit. More than 1000 have been found, with eris larger than pluto. There icy bodies, orbiting the sun beyond neptune"s orbit, are called. The ones that are large enough to pull themselves into a round shape are dwarf trans-neptunian objects , or tnos planets, also called plutoids. Hypothesized component of the solar system (not observed) The solar system is surrounded by the oort cloud of cometary bodies. Reaches out to about 100,000 au from the sun (boston to dallas, texas) Gravitational influences from passing stars occasionally send comets into the solar system.
