Chapter 1 Astronomy Notes PDF

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Chapter 1 summary...

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Field of View: the area visible in an image; usually given as the diameter of the region As the earth rotates on its access, it carries you through sunlight and then through darkness, producing the cycle of day and night. Scientific Notation: The system of recording very large or very small numbers by using powers of 10. Solar System: consists of the sun, its family of planets, and some smaller bodies, such as moons and comets Planets: small, spherical, non-luminous bodies that orbit a star and shine by reflected light. EX: Earth, venus, mercury, etc Star: Self-luminous ball of hot gas that generates its own energy ● The sun is a star Astronomical Unit (AU): Average distance from Earth to the sun; 1.5 x 10 to the 8 km or 93 x 10 to the 6 miles ● Distances are averages because the orbits of the planets are not perfect circles From the sun outward: My = Mercury Very = Venus Educated = Earth Mother = Mars Just = Jupiter Served = Saturn Us = Uranus Noodles = Neptune Light-year (LY): The distance light travels in one year ● NOT a unit of time, but instead distance Galaxy: A great cloud of stars, gas, and dust held together by the combined gravity of all its matter Milky Way: The hazy band of light that circles the sky, produced by the combined light of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy Milky Way Galaxy: The spiral galaxy containing the sun; visible at night as the Milky Way. Spiral Arms: Long, spiral pattern of bright stars, star clusters, gas, and dust that extends from the center to the edge of the disk of spiral galaxies.

Solar System: the sun and its planets VS. Galaxy: contains our solar system plus billions of other stars and whatever planets orbit around them VS. Universe: Includes everything; billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, and presumably, billions of planetary systems Scientific Method: The reasoning style by which scientists test theories against evidence to understand how nature works....