2/26/2023

Earth and solar system

Motion of earth
Day and night formation
• The Earth is a sphere and the sun is a star and produces light.
• The Earth and sun are part of the solar system, with the sun at its
centre.
• An Earth day is 24 hours because the Earth spins from west to east on
its axis once every 24 hours.
• At any one time half of the Earth’s sphere is in sunlight (day) while the
other half is in darkness (night).

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Rising and setting the sun

• 1. Day and night are caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis.
2. The duration of the day and night is not equal at all places on the earth
because of the inclined axis.
3. The sun, the moon, the stars seem to move from east to west because
the earth spins from west to east.
4. The speed of rotation has created a centrifugal force resulting in a bulge
in the middle portion of the earth and a flattened top at the poles.
5. The speed of rotation also affects the general circulation of the
atmosphere.
6. The earth's rotation affects the movements of water in oceans.
7. Rotation causes difference in time over various places on the earth.
8. The side of the earth towards the sun constantly gains heat and the side
away from the sun constantly loses heat by radiating it into outer space.

Rising and setting the sun

• The tilt of Earth’s axis determines where the Sun appears in the sky
throughout the year. During summer in the northern hemisphere, the Sun
rises north of east and sets north of west. It is high in the sky at noon.
During winter in the northern hemisphere, sunrise and sunset appear
farther south along the horizon. The winter-time Sun is lower in the sky
throughout the day.
• We see sunrise and sunset at different points on the horizon during the
year. At the start of spring and fall (the equinoxes), the Sun rises due east
and sets due west. On the summer solstice (around June 21), the Sun rises
and sets at its most northerly points along the horizon. On the winter
solstice (around December 21), the Sun rises and sets at its most southerly
points.
•

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Rising and setting the sun

Motion of moon
• Moon is an average of 384,399 km from Earth, or about the space
that could be occupied by 30 Earths.
• It travels around our planet once every 27.322 days in an elliptical
orbit, an elongated circle.
• The Moon is tidally locked with Earth, which means that it spins on
its axis exactly once each time it orbits our planet. Because of this,
people on Earth only ever see one side of the Moon

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The Solar System

• The solar system comprises 8 planets, approximately 170 natural
planetary satellites (moons), and countless asteroids, meteorites,
and comets.
• The solar system is situated within the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the Milky
Way Galaxy. Alpha Centauri, made up of the stars Proxima Centauri,
Alpha Centauri A, and Alpha Centauri B, is the closest star system to the
solar system.
• There are eight planets in the solar system. The four inner terrestrial
planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, all of which consist mainly
of rock. The four outer planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus,
giant planets that consist mainly of either gases or ice. Pluto was
considered the ninth planet until 2006, when the International
Astronomical Union voted to classify Pluto as a dwarf planet instead.

The Solar System

• Scientists have multiple theories that explain how the solar system
formed. The favoured theory proposes that the solar system formed
from a solar nebula, where the Sun was born out of a concentration
of kinetic energy and heat at the centre, while debris rotating the
nebula collided to create the planets.

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What is a Planet
• A planet is defined as a rocky, or gaseous, spherical, celestial body,
that orbits the sun, but does not emit its own light.
• A planet is also considered to be a celestial body that has sufficient
mass, therefore, it has its own gravity that overcomes unyielding
body forces, and is formed into a hydrostatic equilibrium, or round,
shape.
• It is neither a star nor a satellite of another planet.

Dwarf Planets
• a dwarf planet is a celestial body that -orbits the sun, has enough
mass to assume a nearly round shape, has not cleared the
neighborhood around its orbit and is not a moon.
• A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit
of the Sun, smaller than any of the eight classical planets but still a
world in its own right. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto

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Diameter, surface temperature, Density of planets

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What are Asteroids

• The Short Answer: Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the
Sun. Although asteroids orbit the Sun like planets, they are much
smaller than planets.
• Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky remnants left
over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion
years ago. Most of this ancient space rubble can be found orbiting
our Sun between Mars and Jupiter within the main asteroid belt.

Asteroids

Name Diameter (km) Mean distance from

(geometric mean) Sun (in AU)

1 Ceres 939.4±0.2 2.766

4 Vesta 525.4±0.2 2.362

2 Pallas 511±4 2.773

10 Hygiea 433±8 3.139

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What are Comets

• Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that
orbit the Sun. When frozen, they are the size of a small town. When a
comet's orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust
and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets.
• Comet Arend-Roland.
• Biela's Comet.
• Chiron.

Gravitational Field strength

• Formula is: weight/mass = gravitational field strength. On Earth the
gravitational field strength is 10 N/kg. Other planets have different
gravitational field strengths. The Moon has a gravitational field strength of
1.6 N/kg.
• It is constant at surface
• Larger mass more gravitational field strength
• It decreases as move away from mass
• Gravitational force of sun holds all planets to stay in orbit
• Gravitational force provides centripetal force.
• Sun contains most of the mass of the Solar System
• Sun’s gravitational field decreases and that the orbital speeds of the
planets decrease as the distance from the Sun increases

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Star and the Universe

The Sun
• The Sun is a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star – a hot glowing ball
of hydrogen and helium – at the center of our solar system. It’s about
93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth and it’s our solar
system’s only star. Without the Sun’s energy, life as we know it could
not exist on our home planet.

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Nuclear reactions in stars

• The Sun is Earth’s major source of energy, yet the planet only receives
a small portion of its energy and the Sun is just an ordinary star. Many
stars produce much more energy than the Sun. The energy source for
all stars is nuclear fusion.
• Stars are made mostly of hydrogen and helium, which are packed so
densely in a star that in the star’s center the pressure is great enough
to initiate nuclear fusion reactions. In a nuclear fusion reaction, the
nuclei of two atoms combine to create a new atom. Most commonly,
in the core of a star, two hydrogen atoms fuse to become a helium
atom.

Nuclear reactions in stars

• In a star, the energy from fusion reactions in the core pushes outward
to balance the inward pull of gravity. This energy moves outward
through the layers of the star until it finally reaches the star’s outer
surface. The outer layer of the star glows brightly, sending the energy
out into space as electromagnetic radiation, including visible light,
heat, ultraviolet light, and radio waves
• Stars have different sizes and mass and surface temperature
• Red stars are the coolest. Yellow stars are hotter than red stars. White
stars are hotter than red and yellow. Blue stars are the hottest stars of
all.

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Light year
• Light-year is the distance light travels in one year.
• It is unit of distance
• Distance = speed x time
• Speed of light = 300,000,000 m/s = 3 x 108 m/s
• time = 1 year = 365 x 24 x 60 x 60 = 31,536,000 s
• 1 light year = 3 x108 m/s x 31,536,000 s = 9.46 x 1015 metres
• 1 light year = 9.46 x 1015 m

Glaxies
• A galaxy is a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and
their solar systems, all held together by gravity. We live on a planet
called Earth that is part of our solar system
• The Milky Way is a huge collection of stars, dust and gas. It's called a
spiral galaxy because if you could view it from the top or bottom, it
would look like a spinning pinwheel. The Sun is located on one of the
spiral arms, about 25,000 light-years away from the center of the
galaxy.

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Origin of glaxies
• Stars are born within the clouds of dust and scattered throughout
most galaxies. A familiar example of such as a dust cloud is the Orion
Nebula.
• These clouds gives rise to knots with sufficient mass that the gas and
dust can begin to collapse under its own gravitational attraction and a
protostar is formed.
• Mass of Protostar increases, its core temperature increases. GPE is
converted into Kinetic Energy. It contracts due gravitational foce .
Nuclear fusion occurs. Hydrogen is converted to Helium and star is
formed

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Big bang
• The big bang is how astronomers explain the way the universe began. It is the
idea that the universe began as just a single point, then expanded and
stretched to grow as large as it is right now—and it is still stretching!
• When the universe began, it was just hot, tiny particles mixed
with light and energy. It was nothing like what we see now. As everything
expanded and took up more space, it cooled down.
• The tiny particles grouped together. They formed atoms. Then those atoms
grouped together. Over lots of time, atoms came together to
form stars and galaxies.
• The first stars created bigger atoms and groups of atoms. That led to more
stars being born. At the same time, galaxies were crashing and grouping
together. As new stars were being born and dying, then things like asteroids,
comets, planets, and black holes formed!
• niverse is 13,800,000,000 years old—that’s 13.8 billion. That is a very long
time.

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Evidence for the Big Bang

• All galaxies in the Universe are moving away (receding) from each
other, and not from the Earth. An observer in another galaxy will
reach the same conclusion. The galaxies have motion because space
itself is stretching. This is quite difficult to visualise. The best we can
do is to imagine the galaxies as dots on the surface of an ever-
expanding balloon. The expanding balloon model can also be used to
explain the redshift of light from galaxies. As the Universe expanded,
the wavelength of photons was stretched out.

Doppler redshift
• It is worth pointing out that the term redshift does not imply spectral
lines becoming red; all spectral lines show an increase in wavelength.
The fractional increase in the wavelength depends on the recession
speed v of the source (galaxy).
• For non-relativistic galaxies – those moving with speeds far less than
the speed of light in a vacuum c – we can use the relationship:

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Doppler redshift
• where λ is the wavelength of the electromagnetic waves from the
source, Δλ is the change in the wavelength, f is the frequency of the
electromagnetic waves from the source, Δf is the change in frequency,
v is the recession speed of the source and c is the speed of light in
vacuum.

Red Shift

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