News, etc.

1
News, etc.

• Pluto demoted! (Now a dwarf planet)
• New rule shaped by gravity and
• Dominates its neighborhood

2
News continued

• Charlotte Talks this morning (WFAE 90.7 / 90.3 )
  wfae.org, on Science and Religion, with Dr.
  Mike Corwin, UNCC
• Posted in mp3 on WebCT

3
Lab tonight and Sunday

• TONIGHT Meet and Greet session
• May receive lab manual binder
• SUNDAY Need lab manual! (Bookstore)will do lab
  1 on constellations! Read Introduction in
  advance! (Quiz possible.)

4
Topics Survey Result

• 10. What makes a planet?
• 9. Navigation by stars
• 8. Paranormal
• 7. Comets, meteors and asteroids, oh my!
• 6. Space travel physics
• 5. Extraterrestrial life
• 4. Stars!
• 3. Paranormal
• 2. Black Holes
• 1. Constellations

5
Astrology results

• 52 filled out and turned in (with one choice)
• 3 picked their correct sign descriptor
• What would we expect?
• Is it significant ?
• One year 3 sigmas!?!

6
Scale of the Universe

• How big and far away is stuff?

7
Earth-Moon

• Earth 8k miles in diameter
• Rotates?
• Moon about a ¼ of the Earth size
• Moon is 100 of its diameters away

8
Solar system
Sun
Sizes not to scale!

• Earth-Sun distance is the astronomical Unit
  (AU)
• Planets at 0.4, 0.7, 1 (us!), 1.5, 5, 10, 20, 40
  Aus, and

9
New (now, dwarf) planet 7/31/05

• 96 AUs
• Really a Kuiper Belt object?
• Orbit inclined 45 degrees
• Xena?

10
Nearest Star

• 4.2 light years (ly) away
• c 3 x 105 km/s
• 1 ly 9.5 x 1012 km or about 63,000 AU
• So nearest star is 4.2 times this or about
  265,000 AUs

11
Our Milky Way Galaxy

• MWG about 100,000 ly in diameter
• We are 2/3 the way out

12
Nearest Galaxy, in Andromeda

• 2 million light years away
• (about 20 MWG diameters)

13
The Local Group

• A few dozen galaxies
• Spread over a few Mly

14
Nearest Large Group

• Virgo Cluster 60 Mly away (20 LG dias)
• 1000 member galaxies in it

15
Observable Universe 14.7 Gly

• Hubble Deep Field