Meet your Solar System

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Meet your Solar System
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Astronomical Unit Scientific Notation

• 1 Astronomical Unit 149 598 000 km
• It is the relative Earth-Sun distance
• So a planet 3 a.u. away from Earth is 3 times the
  distance from the Earth to the sun.
• Scientific notation
• The number 123,000,000,000 in scientific notation
  is written as 1.23 x 1011
• Do you know this number, 300,000,000 m/sec.?
• It's the Speed of light !
• Do you recognize this number, 0.000 000 000 753
  kg? This is the mass of a dust particle!

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Pluto

• Dwarf Planet
• Pluto is composed primarily of rock and ice and
  is relatively small approximately 1/5 the mass
  of Earths moon and 1/3 its volume.
• It has an eccentric and highly inclined orbit
  that takes it from 30 to 49 AU (4.4-7.4
  billion km) from the Sun. This causes Pluto to
  periodically come closer to the Sun than Neptune.
• This is why Pluto is no longer considered a planet

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Planets and Solar system

• Solar Systema group of planets that orbit around
  a sun
• Planet an object that orbits
• In history, the solar system model was centered
  around Earth and it was thought that everything
  orbited around Earth (geocentric)
• This was thought to be correct for over 1500 years

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Heliocentric model

• Galileo proposed that the sun was the centre of
  the solar system
• Nicholas Copernicus added they orbit the sun in
  perfect circles with the idea of retrograde
  motion
• Kepler modified it to elliptical orbit shapes

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The planets
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Classification of Planets

• Terrestrial Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
• Gas GiantsJupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
• Inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
• Outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and
  Neptune
• http//www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/