Amazing Astronomy Facts:  When you look at the Andromeda galaxy (which is 2.

3 million light years away), the light you are seeing took 2.3 million years to reach you. Thus you are seeing the galaxy as it was 2.3 million years ago.  Light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach you, thus you see the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. It might have blown up 4 minutes ago and you wouldn't know about it!  The Earth is not a sphere! It actually is an oblate spheroid, it is squashed slightly at the poles and bulges out at the equator due to its rotation.  Spare a thought for the constellations that never made it into the official list... these include Machina Electrica (the electricity generator), Officina Typographica (The Printing Office), and Turdus Solitarius (the solitary thrush)  When Galileo viewed Saturn for the first time through a telescope, he described the planet as having "ears". It was not until 1655 that Christian Huygens suggested the crazy theory that they might be an enormous set of rings around the planet.  If you could put Saturn in an enormous bathtub, it would float. The planet is less dense than water.  A teaspoon-full of Neutron star would weigh about 112 million tonnes.  Jupiter is heavier than all the other planets put together.  Even on the clearest night, the human eye can only see about 3,000 stars. There are an estimated 100,000,000,000 in our galaxy alone!  The tallest mountain in the solar system is Olympus Mons, on Mars at a height of about 15 miles, three times the height of Mount Everest. It covers an area about half the size of Spain.  If the sun were the size of a dot on an ordinary-sized letter 'i', then the nearest star would be 10 miles away.  Half-a-billionth of the energy released by the sun reaches the Earth  Temperatures on Venus are hot enough to melt lead.  If you could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) it would take 100,000 years to cross our galaxy!  Only one side of the moon ever faces Earth. The moons period of rotation is exactly the same as it's period of orbit.  Betelgeuse, the bright star on Orion's top-left shoulder, is so big that if it was placed where the sun is, it would swallow up Earth, Mars and Jupiter!  If you stand on the equator, you are spinning at about 1,000 mph in as the Earth turns, as well as charging along at 67,000 mph round the sun.  On the equator you are about 3% lighter than at the poles, due to the centrifugal* force of the Earth spinning.  The atmosphere on Earth is proportionately thinner than the skin on an apple.  On Mercury a day (the time it takes for it to spin round once) is 59 Earth-days. Its year (the time it takes to orbit the sun) is 88 days- that means there are fewer than 2 days in a year!  If a piece of the sun the size of a pinhead were to be placed on Earth, you could not safely stand within 90 miles of it!  Its estimated that the number of stars in the universe is greater than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches in the world! On a clear night, we can see the equivalent of a handful of sand.  Every year the sun evaporates 100,000 cubic miles of water from Earth (that weighs 400 trillion tonnes!)  Jupiter acts as a huge vacuum cleaner, attracting and absorbing comets and meteors. Some estimates say that without Jupiters gravitational influence the number of massive projectiles hitting Earth would be 10,000 times greater.  Astronomers believe that space is not a complete vacuum- there are three atoms per cubic metre.  Saturn is not the only planet with rings- Neptune has it's own ring system.

UNIVERSE ORIGIN Astronomy: It is built on Greek root astron = star and nomos = arrangement, order or law. Astronomy, therefore, is the study of arrangement of stars. It is the branch of Physics that studies celestial bodies and the Universe as a whole. ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE: The Big Bang, that gigantic explosion occurred some 15 billion years ago, is not only the beginning of our own Universe, space, matter and time, but also the generator of all mass. This mass of interstellar cloud of dust and gas (solar nebula) collapsed under its own gravity. The result is, this collapse of molecular clouds vaporized the dusts and the fireball expanded, cooled and compressed in the middle and developed into a Protostar, leaving the rest of the gas to rotate around it. This cooling effect generated the most basic elements, hydrogen and helium. In due course most of the gases orbiting the forming star flowed inwards towards the star and became part and parcel of it. However, the gases are rotating and therefore due to centrifugal force some of the gases stayed away from the forming star and formed a disc capable of building itself naturally around the forming star. This disc gives away its energy through radiation and cools off into metals, rocks and ice. The dust particles collide and generate bigger particles and this process goes on till the particle builds into the size of a small rocky boulder known as asteroids. Once the bigger of these particles become really large enough to have its own gravity, the growth zooms! Because of gravity, they absorb smaller particles in their orbit and grow substantially. This process, after millions of years got us 10 or more planets in regular habits forming the solar system.

1. What is a galaxy? A galaxy is an enormous collection of a few million to trillions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity. Galaxies can be several thousand to hundreds of thousands of light-years across.

2. What is the name of our galaxy? The name of our galaxy is the Milky Way. All of the stars that you see at night and our Sun belong to the Milky Way. When you go outside in the country on a dark night and look up, you will see a milky, misty-looking band stretching across the sky. When you look at this band, you are looking into the densest parts of the Milky Way: the disk and the bulge.

3. Where is Earth in the Milky Way galaxy? Our solar system is in a spiral arm called the Orion Arm, and is about two-thirds of the way from the center of our galaxy to the edge of the starlight. Earth is the third planet from the Sun in our solar system of nine planets.

4. What is the closest galaxy like our own, and how far away is it? The closest spiral galaxy is Andromeda, a galaxy much like our own Milky Way. It is 2.2 million light-years away from us. Andromeda is approaching our galaxy at a rate of 670,000 miles per hour. Five billion years from now it may even collide with our Milky Way galaxy.

5. Why do we study galaxies? By studying other galaxies, astronomers learn more about the Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our solar system. Answers to such questions as "Do all galaxies have the same shape?," "Are all galaxies the same size?," "Do they all have the same number of stars?," and "How and when did galaxies form?" help astronomers learn about the history of the universe. Galaxies are visible to vast distances, and trace the structure of the visible universe with their collections of billions of stars, gas, and dust.

6. What are the parts of a galaxy? A galaxy contains stars, gas, and dust. In a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way the stars, gas, and dust are organized into a bulge, a disk containing spiral arms, and a halo. Elliptical galaxies have a bulge-shape and a halo, but do not have a disk. Bulge A round structure made primarily of old stars, gas, and dust. The bulge of the Milky Way is roughly 10,000 light-years across. The outer parts of the bulge are difficult to distinguish from the halo. Disk A flattened region that surrounds the bulge in a spiral galaxy. The disk is shaped like a pancake. The disk of the Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across and 2000 light-years thick. It contains mostly young stars, gas, and dust, which are concentrated in spiral arms. Some old stars are also present. Spiral arms Curved extensions beginning at the bulge of a spiral galaxy, giving it a "pinwheel" appearance. Spiral arms contain a lot of gas and dust as well as young blue stars. Spiral arms are found only in spiral galaxies. Halo The halo primarily contains individual old stars and clusters of old stars (globular clusters). It may be over 130,000 light-years across. The halo also contains dark matter, which is material that we cannot see but whose gravitational force can be measured. Stars, gas, and dust Stars come in a variety of types. Blue stars, which are very hot, tend to have shorter lifetimes than red stars, which are cooler. Regions of galaxies where stars are currently forming are therefore bluer than regions where there has been no recent star formation. Spiral galaxies seem to have a lot of gas and dust, while elliptical galaxies have very little gas or dust.

7. How are galaxies classified? What do they look like?

Edwin Hubble classified galaxies into four major types: spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, and irregular (see also Question 8 and Question 10). Most galaxies are spirals, barred spirals, or ellipticals. A spiral galaxy consists of a flattened disk containing spiral (pinwheel-shaped) arms, a bulge at its center, and a halo. Spiral galaxies have a variety of shapes, and they are classified according to the size of the bulge and the tightness and appearance of the arms. The spiral arms, which wrap around the bulge, contain many young blue stars and lots of gas and dust. Stars in the bulge tend to be older and redder. Yellow stars like our Sun are found throughout the disk of a spiral galaxy. These galaxies rotate somewhat like a hurricane or a whirlpool. A barred spiral galaxy is a spiral that has a bar-shaped collection of stars running across its center. An elliptical galaxy does not have a disk or arms; rather, it is characterized by a smooth, ball-shaped appearance. Ellipticals contain old stars and possess little gas or dust. They are classified by the shape of the ball, which can range from round to oval (baseball-shaped to football-shaped). The smallest elliptical galaxies (called dwarf ellipticals) are probably the most common type of galaxy in the nearby universe. In contrast to spirals, the stars in ellipticals do not revolve around the center in an organized way. The stars move on randomly-oriented orbits within the galaxy like a swarm of bees. An irregular galaxy is neither spiral nor elliptical. Irregular galaxies tend to be smaller objects without definite shape, and they typically have very hot newer stars mixed in with lots of gas and dust. These galaxies often have active regions of star formation. Sometimes their irregular shape is the result of interactions or collisions between galaxies. Observations such as the Hubble Deep Fields show that irregular galaxies were more common in the distant (early) universe.

1. What is the solar system? Our solar system consists of:

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One central star the Sun Eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune More than 140 moons Millions of rocky asteroids Billions of icy comets

2. How many planets are there in our solar system? Our solar system has eight planets and one star: the Sun. The planets are (in order, from the Sun, outward): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto was considered the ninth planet until August 2006, when the International Astronomical Union reclassified it as a "dwarf planet." A new mnemonic used to remember the planets in order is, "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos."

3. How did the solar system form? The planets, asteroids, and comets in the solar system are loose particles left over from the formation of the Sun. Originally the gas and dust that would become the Sun was the core of a cloud much larger than the solar system, probably several light-years across One light-year is approximately 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) km, or 6 trillion miles. The core was slowly rotating at first, but as the cloud collapsed it spun faster, like a spinning ice skater pulling

in his arms. The rotation prevented the material at the core's equator from collapsing as fast as the material at the poles, so the core became a spinning disk. Gas and dust in the disk spiraled gradually in to the center, where it accumulated to form the Sun. But because dust is denser than gas, some of the dust settled to the mid-plane of the disk. These dust particles stuck together to make clumps, then clumps stuck together to make rocks, then rocks collided to make planets. In the case of the "gas giant" planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), the rocky cores were massive enough to also attract appreciable amounts of gas. The outer layers of Jupiter and Saturn are made up of hydrogen and other gases. Uranus and Neptune are also gas giant planets, but they were built up mainly from ice chunks. The Sun, then, is the collapsed core of an interstellar gas cloud. The planets, asteroids, and comets are small lumps of dust or ice chunks that stayed in orbit instead of spiraling into the Sun. The planets all formed within a very short period probably a few million years about 5 billion years ago.

4. How old is the solar system? The solar system is about 4.5 billion years old.

5. How big is the solar system? There are no physical boundaries in space. The traditional view of the solar system is that it consists of eight planets orbiting around one star: the Sun. Neptune, the farthest planet from the Sun, orbits at approximately 30 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. An astronomical unit is a unit of length used by astronomers. One astronomical unit equals the average distance from Earth to the Sun about 93 million miles (150 million km). The solar system also includes the Kuiper Belt, a comet-rich area that begins near Neptune's orbit and stretches far beyond it, to about 50 AU from the Sun. Part of Pluto's elliptical orbit extends far into the Kuiper Belt. Beyond Pluto's orbit is another region of icy objects in our solar system, called the Oort Cloud, which extends approximately 50,000 AU from the Sun.
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6. Are there differences among the planets in our solar system? Planets come in different sizes and colors. The four planets closer to the Sun are called rocky, or terrestrial, planets. They are small in size and similar to Earth in composition. They have no rings, and only two of them (Earth and Mars) have moons. The four outer planets, called gas giants, are much larger than the rocky planets. They all have rings and many moons. The gas giants are made up mostly of hydrogen, helium, frozen water, ammonia, methane, and carbon monoxide. There is a discussion over whether Pluto is a planet. Some astronomers think that Pluto might be little more than a giant comet (see question 15). Its composition is similar to that of comets, and its orbit is quite different from that of the other planets. Astronomers agree that Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt of comets because its composition and orbit fit neatly within that group. However, some argue that it deserves planetary status as well.
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7. What is the asteroid belt? The asteroid belt is a zone between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Millions of asteroids inhabit the asteroid belt, with many more scattered throughout the solar system. It is believed that the asteroids in the asteroid belt never formed a planet because the gravity of nearby Jupiter kept pulling them apart.
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8. Where do comets come from? Comets are giant snowballs of ice and rock that formed in the outer solar system, the regions we call the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. When the gravity of a large planet disturbs such an iceball, its orbit can change to pass through the inner solar system. If it passes close enough to the Sun, the ices melt and produce the coma and tail of a comet. Short-period comets comets that return to the solar system about once every 100 years probably originate from the Kuiper Belt. This belt is located within the solar system's ecliptic plane, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Since 1992, thousands of objects have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt. These objects are small compared with planets. Their sizes range from 10 to 2500 kilometers in diameter. Earth's diameter, by comparison, is 14,000 kilometers. Astronomers estimate that this belt contains at least 200 million comets. Long-period comets comets that we see rarely (once every few thousand years) are thought to originate from a vast, spherical cloud of frozen bodies called the Oort Cloud, named for the Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort. This cloud of comets, which also orbits the Sun, resides in the farthest region of the solar system, beyond Neptune and Pluto. Occasionally, a gravitational disturbance caused by a passing star or an interstellar cloud causes one of the frozen bodies in the Oort Cloud to begin a journey toward the inner solar system, where it makes a passing rendezvous with our Sun.
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9. Are there any planets that can be seen without a telescope? Yes. Some planets can indeed be seen with the unaided eye, which is how they were discovered by the ancient civilizations. They are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The other two planets Uranus and Neptune were discovered using a telescope, as was Pluto.
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10. What are the rocky, or terrestrial, planets? Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are called rocky, or terrestrial, planets. They are similar to Earth in composition. Heat from the Sun evaporated lightweight elements like hydrogen and helium into interplanetary space. Mostly rock and metal were left in this zone. Eventually, it clumped together to form the inner terrestrial planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are called the rocky, or terrestrial, planets. They are the planets closest to the Sun. Their composition is similar to Earth's composition, containing mostly the heavy materials of rock and metal. Because they formed closer to the heat of Sun, the lighter gases and ices could not condense during their formation, as they did in the outer parts of the solar system.
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11. What are the gas giant planets? Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are called the gas giants. Jupiter and Saturn contain the largest percentages of hydrogen and helium, while Uranus and Neptune contain the largest shares of ices frozen water, ammonia, methane, and carbon monoxide.
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12. Which planets have rings? The four gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all have rings.
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13. Can the Hubble Space Telescope take pictures of all the planets in our solar system? No. Mercury and the Earth are the only two planets that the Hubble Space Telescope has not observed for astronomical purposes. Mercury is too close to the Sun, which is too bright for Hubble to look at. The Earth's surface, only 380 miles from Hubble, is too close for Hubble to observe.
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14. Can the Hubble Space Telescope take pictures of the Sun? No. The Sun is too bright for the Hubble Space Telescope to observe. Its bright light can damage the telescope's sensitive detectors.
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15. Why is there a discussion over whether Pluto is or is not a planet? Pluto was called a planet from its discovery in 1930 until it was re-classified as a "dwarf planet" in 2006. The change in status stems from the fact that, since 1993, astronomers have discovered thousands of objects similar to Pluto in size and composition, in the region of Pluto s orbit. This region is called the Kuiper Belt and the objects are called Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs). Pluto fits with the objects in the Kuiper Belt, and does not fit with either the rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) or the gas giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). Factors that distinguish Pluto from the eight planets include its composition, atmosphere, small size, a comparatively large moon, and the shape of its orbit around the Sun. Composition: Pluto is composed of ice, rock, and frozen gases, similar to the composition of the comet-like objects in the Kuiper Belt (the region beyond Neptune's orbit). Atmosphere: Pluto's atmosphere grows as it moves closer to the Sun and recedes as it moves away. This is similar to the comet-like objects found in its vicinity. The frozen gases sublimate (turn from a solid to a gas) as Pluto moves closer to the Sun and then condense on the surface of Pluto as it moves away from the Sun. In contrast, the atmospheres of the planets do not appear or disappear during their orbits. Small size: Pluto is relatively tiny, having a mass about 1/500th that of Earth (in contrast, Mercury's mass is 1/20th that of Earth). In diameter, Pluto is 1/5th the size of Earth. Although puny on a planetary scale, Pluto is one of the

largest objects inhabiting the Kuiper belt. Large moon: Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is a little more than one-half the radius of Pluto and one-eighth its mass. Pluto and Charon are in a "synchronous" orbit: they always show the same face to each other as they orbit. Charon's orbit is only 20,000 km away from Pluto. For comparison, Earth's Moon has about 1/80th the mass of Earth and orbits 400,000 km away. Many astronomers consider Pluto and Charon to be a binary Kuiper Belt object since they orbit a common center. Pluto s two smaller moons, Nix and Hydra, are considerably smaller and more distant from Pluto than is Charon. Orbit around the Sun: Pluto's orbit is more elliptical than that of any of the planets (it actually crosses Neptune's orbit). It is tilted at an inclination of 17.15 degrees relative to the plane of Earth's orbit. The planets all have much smaller inclinations, while the Kuiper Belt objects can have large inclinations like Pluto.

16. What is a dwarf planet? A dwarf planet is a celestial body within the solar system that shares the characteristics of planets. It orbits the Sun, is not a moon, and has a spherical or nearly spherical shape. Unlike a planet, however, a dwarf planet is not massive enough to clear away any loose cosmic rubble from its orbit. Dwarf planets include Ceres, Pluto, and Eris.