Perspectives on Our Solar System Introduction: ‘Our’ Place The Hubble Deep Field. Looking at many galaxies who would guess that one like these would have a system of worlds with a planet like earth?

The Blue Earth From Space Why is it blue? 4/5 oceans on surface—necessary for life? Very rare. Preferential scattering of blue light.

Our Moon Same angular size as our Sun: ½ a degree. Same side always faces us. Goes through phases and eclipses. All very rare phenomena.

The other ‘planets’ ( 8 excluding Pluto) Pluto has been demoted to ‘dwarf planet’.

Our star, the Sun About 10x the diameter of the largest planet: Jupiter. Jupiter is about 10x the diameter of the earth.

Solar System Orbits Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Pluto’s orbit goes inside of that of Neptune.

The scale of the orbits An AU is an Astronomical Unit or average Earth-Sun distance = 93 Million Miles.

Our Galaxy: The Milky Way We are 2/3rds the way out from the center of the disk of spiral arms. The Milky Way is a Typical Large Spiral.

Stellar Nurseries. Stars and solar systems are born in clouds of dust and hydrogen molecules. To the right we see stars being born and glowing in the Milky Way.

The Local Group Our Milky Way is in the Local Group, our cluster of galaxies held together by gravity.

The Local or ‘Virgo’ Supercluster The Local Supercluster includes the Local Group and a large cluster called the Virgo Cluster.

The Atom

Solar System’s Place In Space