CAS AS 101 Lecture Notes - Big Bang
16 Jan 2014
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Planet size: largest to smallest: jupiter, saturn, neptune, uranus, earth, mars, mercury / venus. Unit of measurement: 1 astronomical unit = 1 au= 150 million km. (distance from earth to sun = 1 au: closest star = alpha centauri (271,000 au, light year = 1013 km, light travels to earth in 8 minutes, alpha centauri is 4 ly away, avg. distance to the moon is 30x farther away than earth"s diameter. The most basic motions of earth are its daily rotation (spin) and its yearly orbit (revolution) around the sun: earth rotates once each day around its axis at the same time earth orbits the sun. (takes roughly one year. , earth"s orbital path defines a flat plane that we call the ecliptic plane, axis tilt points almost directly to polaris/ north star, earth orbits the sun and turns on its axis counterclockwise, galaxies move: according to hubble in relation to raisins in cakes.
