A Brief Tour of the Universe Light travels at 186,000 miles/sec = 300,000 km/sec Enormous distances mean that the farther away the object, the farther back in time we are looking

Influence of moon - tides Atmosphere Composition Surface activity - Continental drift and plate tectonics Rotation and Revolution Days Seasons

Cratering Phases Eclipses - Lunar (Moon passes through Earth’s shadow)

Solar eclipse - Moon passes directly in front of the sun Corona - Sun’s outer atmosphere

Planets - Mercury (Closest to sun) Similar to moon

Mars Surface - canyons and canals Olympus Mons - Largest known volcano in solar system (3x Mt. Everest) Mars Rover - spectrometer equipped (determine chemical composition)

Jovian Planets (Gas Giants) Jupiter (320x mass of Earth) Great Red Spot (Hurricane-like storm over 300 yrs. Old)

Saturn Rings - Composition, how they formed Can see three moons at bottom

Smaller objects - comets, asteroids and meteors

Sun - Center of solar system, orbited by planets, 5800K Sunspots - cooler regions of sun’s surface, evidence that sun rotates

Stars - learn how they are classified Closest Star - 4 light years away Pleiades - open cluster - Few hundred to tens of thousands of young stars Omega Centauri - Globular cluster - Millions of older stars dating back to formation of Milky Way Globular cluster shown

Hubble space telescope - Atmosphere opaque to many wavelengths of light Emission nebula - Hot glowing gas - star formation Eagle nebula - pillars of cold gas and dust (Hubble image)

Horsehead nebula in the constellation Orion

More Nebula

Stellar Death: supernovas Supernova remnants 1054 AD, Supernova observed by Chinese astronomers Remnants of Vela supernova

Neutron Stars and Black Holes Neutron star - Incredibly dense (Thimbleful of material weighs 100 million tons - about the mass of an average mountain Black hole - so massive that not even light can escape - “pinches” itself off from rest of the universe - Artist conception of binary visible-black hole system shown

Milky Way Galaxy Looking towards galactic center towards Earth Artists conception of Milky Way - Spiral galaxy with supermassive black hole at the center

Galaxies - 20 to 30 million light years away containing hundreds of billions of stars Spiral, elliptical, and irregular

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Temperature range of only 400 Millionths of a Kelvin Evidence for Big Bang