Astronomy Test 3 Notes - Robert Gowdy PDF

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Robert Gowdy...

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Astronomy 10/12/16 Comets and the Outer Solar System • Comets are a frozen ball of gas, ice, and dust • Parts of a Comet o Nucleus – the “dirty snowball: a few kilometers across o Coma – vaporizing gas and dust: as large as the planet Jupiter o Ion tail – atoms with electrons missing: as large as the Earth’s orbit o Dust tail – rock fragments: forms close to the Sun • Meteoroid – before it hits the atmosphere • Meteor – passing through the atmosphere • Meteorite – once it has landed • The point in the sky where the shower seems to come from is called the radiant and indicates the direction of the Earth’s motion when it encounters the cloud. • Oort cloud has a reservoir of could stuff that could turn into comets. Purely theoretical • Short period comets – comets that have periods that them back near the sun in less than 200 years • Pluto o Smaller than our moon o Surface temps -369 – -387 o the lack of craters on the surface indicate constant change o 6.4 days to complete rotation o Axis tilt of 119.68 degrees, similar to Uranus o 248 years to complete orbit o no magnetic field o 5 satellites • Charon • Nix • Hydra • Styx • Kerberos • Some think Charon isn’t even a moon but rather a “double dwarf planet” • The rest of them are too small to spherical

o Space Probe • New Horizons  Kuiper belt is like a donut around the planets  Inner oort cloud is a doughnut-shaped region with objects above and below the plane of the solar system Earth’s Atmosphere and Interior  The main components of the atmosphere are o Nitrogen – 78% o Oxygen – 20% o Water – 1% o Argon – 0.9% o Carbon Dioxide – 0.04%  Warm air rises and cold air falls ...