Terrestrial planets - Loudoun County Public Schools



Academic/ELL Earth Science AGENDANovember 10, Friday:B DayTake out your agenda from last class and your Quiz Review WARM-UPS: SHORT REVIEW PRIOR to your testOBJECTIVES:ASTRONOMY:Review of the Big Bang Theory (formation of the Universe) SUMMARIZE the steps describing the events of the Big Bang TheoryREVIEW NOTES on GalaxiesFill in the GRAPHIC ORGANIZER after notesTEST: Constellations, Galaxies, Big BangWrite your answers on your answer sheetRaise your hand when you complete the test and I will collect your workAFTER the test Read the attached notes on the Sun and Solar SystemMake a diagram of the objects in the solar system. Label theseHOMEWORK:PREVIEW – Sun & Solar SystemReview the information on the sun and solar systemComplete your diagram (picture) of the solar system – be sure to label all objects!The Sun and Solar SystemThe sun at the heart of our solar system is a yellow dwarf star, a hot ball of glowing gases. Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything from the biggest planets to the smallest particles of debris in its orbit. Electric currents in the sun generate a magnetic field that is carried out through the solar system by the solar wind — a stream of electrically charged gas blowing outward from the sun in all directions.The connection and interactions between the sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, climate, radiation belts and aurorae. Though it is special to us, there are billions of stars like our sun scattered across the Milky Way galaxy.Anatomy of the SunThe sun's enormous mass is held together by gravitational attraction, producing immense pressure and temperature at its core. The sun has six regions: the core, the radiative zone, and the convective zone in the interior; the visible surface, called the photosphere; the chromosphere; and the outermost region, the corona.At the core, the temperature is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius), which is sufficient to sustain thermonuclear fusion. This is a process in which atoms combine to form larger atoms and in the process release staggering amounts of energy. Specifically, in the sun's core, hydrogen atoms fuse to make helium.The energy produced in the core powers the sun and produces all the heat and light the sun emits. Energy from the core is carried outward by radiation, which bounces around the radiative zone, taking about 170,000 years to get from the core to the top of the convective zone. The temperature drops below 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius) in the convective zone, where large bubbles of hot plasma (a soup of ionized atoms) move upwards. The surface of the sun — the part we can see — is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius). That's much cooler than the blazing core, but it's still hot enough to make carbon, like diamonds and graphite, not just melt, but boil.SurfaceThe surface of the sun, the photosphere, is a 300-mile-thick (500-kilometer-thick) region, from which most of the sun's radiation escapes outward. This is not a solid surface like the surfaces of planets. Instead, this is the outer layer of the gassy star.We see radiation from the photosphere as sunlight when it reaches Earth about eight minutes after it leaves the sun. The temperature of the photosphere is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius).AtmosphereAbove the photosphere lie the tenuous chromosphere and the corona (crown), which make up the thin solar atmosphere. This is where we see features such as sunspots and solar flares.Visible light from these top regions is usually too weak to be seen against the brighter photosphere, but during total solar eclipses, when the moon covers the photosphere, the chromosphere looks like a red rim around the sun, while the corona forms a beautiful white crown with plasma streamers narrowing outward, forming shapes that look like flower petals.Strangely, the temperature in the sun's atmosphere increases with altitude, reaching as high as 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius). The source of coronal heating has been a scientific mystery for more than 50 years.Potential for LifeThe sun itself is not a place conducive to living things, with its hot, energetic mix of gases and plasma. But the sun has made life on Earth possible, providing warmth as well as energy that organisms like plants use to form the basis of many food chains.MoonsThe sun doesn't have any moons; instead, it has planets and their moons, along with asteroids, comets, and other objects.A solar system is a star and all of the objects that travel around it — planets, moons, asteroids, comets and meteoroids. Most stars host their own planets, so there are likely tens of billions of other solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Solar systems can also have more than one star. These are called binary star systems if there are two stars, or multi-star systems if there are three or more stars.The solar system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the vast Milky Way galaxy. It consists of the sun (our star) and everything that orbits around it. This includes the eight planets and their natural satellites (such as our moon), dwarf planets and their satellites, as well as asteroids, comets and countless particles of smaller debris.Size and DistanceThe solar system extends much farther than the eight planets that orbit the sun. The solar system also includes the Kuiper Belt that lies past Neptune's orbit. This is a sparsely occupied ring of icy bodies, almost all smaller than the most popular Kuiper Belt Object, dwarf planet Pluto.Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to leave our solar system.Meanwhile, materials we are used to seeing as ice, liquid or gas settled in the outer regions of the young solar system. Gravity pulled these materials together, and that is where we find gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and ice giants Uranus and Neptune.ExplorationIn the early 17th century, Galileo Galilei's discoveries using the recently invented telescope strongly supported the concept of a solar system in which all the planets, including Earth, revolve around a central star — the sun. At the time this was called Copernican heliocentric theory, and it was a revolutionary idea, as most people thought Earth was the center of the universe.Since then, we have learned much about our solar system and what lies beyond it using ground-based telescopes, spacecraft and mathematical models.Terrestrial planetsThe inner four worlds are called “terrestrial planets,” because, like Earth, their surfaces are all rocky. Pluto, too, has a solid surface (and a very frozen one) but has never been grouped with the four terrestrials.Jovian planetsThe four large outer worlds — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — are known as the “Jovian planets” (meaning “Jupiter-like”) because they are all huge compared to the terrestrial planets, and because they are gaseous in nature rather than having rocky surfaces (though some or all of them may have solid cores, astronomers say).?According to NASA, "two of the outer planets beyond the orbit of Mars — Jupiter and Saturn — are known as gas giants; the more distant Uranus and Neptune are called ice giants." This is because, while the first two are dominated by gas, while the last two have more ice. All four contain mostly hydrogen and helium.71437519050Types of Galaxies00Types of Galaxies46958253175000115252522860003009900228600011811002480310004448175490664500237172549733200023812549745900091440046126390032073854649470005229225465899500right4297045EXAMPLES00EXAMPLESright31635700024479253249295003048003201670007620002858770003226434286956500527685028587700053054251355090004000502525395BASIC DESCRIPTION00BASIC DESCRIPTION75184018313400031997651888490008572550736500790575106807000419100753745SPIRAL00SPIRAL2324100868045ELLIPTICAL00ELLIPTICAL4352925398780IRREGULAR00IRREGULAR ................
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