Objects in the Solar System

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Objects in the Solar System

• Sun
• Planets
• Asteroids
• Meteoroids
• Comets
• Dwarf planets

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Solar System
Distance from Earth to Sun
93,000,000 miles 8 light-minutes
Size of Solar System 5.5 light-hours
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The Sun

• 99.8 of the mass of our solar system
• Three fourths of the suns mass is Hydrogen
• One fourth is Helium
• Light and heat escapes from the core and reaches
  Earth-our source of energy
• 5 billion years left

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Astronomical UnitSpeed of light

• 1 AU93,000,000 miles or 150,000,000km
• Thats the distance between the Sun and the
  Earth.
• The speed of light is 300,000 km/sec or 186,000
  miles per second.
• A light year is the distance light travels in one
  year.
• Almost 10 trillion km or 6 trillion miles

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Suns Atmosphere

• Photosphere
• 6000 0C
• The surface, What we see (almost) everyday
• Chromosphere
• 10,000 0C (not dense)
• UV production
• Corona
• 1 Million 0C (not dense)
• X-rays, flares

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Suns interior

• Core
• 15 Million Celsius
• Energy Furnace
• Radiative Zone
• Region of tightly packed gas
• Energy transferred as electromagnetic
• radiation
• Convection Zone
• Energy Boils out to the Surface

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Sunspots

• Cooler regions (4000 K) of the surface
• Look darker than the Surface
• Sometimes there are
• lots of sunspots-active sun
• Sometimes not many sunspots
• not active
• Sunspots appear on an 11-year cycle

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Prominences

• Reddish loops of gas that link sunspots
• Stick out over the edge of the sun
• 10000 degrees Celsius

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Solar flares

• When the prominences connect they release
• large amounts of energy
• Increases the solar wind from the corona
• Can cause magnetic storm in the Earths upper
  atmosphere

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Sun-Earth Connection

• Solar weather affects us on Earth
• Flares produce lots of x-rays (dangerous to
  humans and technology)
• beautiful--produce northern lights
• harmful-can really screw up communications
  satellites and our technology

• Flares can also eject
• ionized particles into space
• (coronal mass ejections)

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Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star ...
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How I Wonder What You Are

• Astronomers classify stars by their color, size,
  and brightness. Other properties of stars are
  chemical composition and mass.
• Color and Temperature a stars color indicates
  the temperature of its surface.
• The hottest stars appear blue
• The cooler stars appear red
• The spectrum of color in a star is from blues to
  greens to yellows and reds.

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Space is filled with all the matter that is
necessary to make stars.
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• Stars begin with slow accumulation of gas
• and dust.
• Gravitational attraction of Clumps
• attracts more material.
• Contraction causes Temperature and
• Pressure to slowly increase.

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• Constant Battle Between Gravity and Pressure
• Gravity wants to make the star smaller
• Pressure wants to make the star bigger

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• Massive stars
• burn a succession
• of elements.
• Iron is the most
• stable element
• and cannot be
• fused further.
• Instead of
• releasing energy,
• it uses energy.

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Nuclear fusion

• At 15 million degrees Celsius in the
• center of the star, fusion ignites !
• 4 (1H) --gt 4He 2 e 2 neutrinos energy
• Where does the energy come from ?
• Mass of four 1H gt Mass of one 4He

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Life of Stars
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The Bubble Nebula Here you can see the old dust
and gas being blown away by the heat of the new
star. Image from the Liverpool Telescope
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What is a Galaxy?

• a massive
• collection of
• stars, gas, and
• dust kept together
• by gravity

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Spiral Galaxy
Spiral galaxies have arms emanating from a
bright central nucleus.
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Elliptical Galaxies
Elliptical galaxies lack spiral arms and dust.
Galaxies contain stars that are generally
identified as being old.
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Irregular galaxies

• Irregular galaxies lack any
• specific form and contain
• young stars, gas and dust.

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Colors of Galaxies

• Combined colors of its stars.
• Young stars -blue appearance
• Older galaxies will appear redder.
• Some galaxies have both red and blue appearance.

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Our galaxy is the Milky Way.

• Our solar system is in a spiral arm called the
  Orion Arm,
• and is about two-thirds of the way from the
  center of
• our galaxy .

• In a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, the stars,
  gas, and dust are
• organized into a "bulge," a "disk" containing
• "spiral arms," and a "halo."

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• Bulge- The bulge is a
• round structure
• made primarily
• of old stars, gas, and dust.
• Disk- The disk is a flattened region that
  surrounds the bulge in a spiral galaxy.
• It contains mostly young stars, gas, and dust,
  which are concentrated in spiral arms. Some old
  stars are also present.

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• Spiral Arms- The spiral arms are curved
  extensions
• beginning at the bulge of a spiral galaxy,
• giving it a "pinwheel" appearance.
• Halo- The halo primarily contains individual old
  stars
• and clusters of old stars ("globular clusters").

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The Hidden Lives of Galaxies
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Planets

• To be a planet
• an object must orbit a star.
• If it orbits something else, like another
  planet, it is a moon instead.
• the object must be big enough that gravity makes
  it into a sphere.

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ss.eiu.planetdefine/
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• Terrestrial Planets are small, dense, rocky
• worlds with less atmosphere than the other type
• of planet. Craters, no rings, very few moons,
• very small. (Densities between 3.3-5.5 g/cm3)
• Mercury
• Venus
• Earth
• Mars

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Gas planets

• Jovian Planets are large, gaseous,
• low density worlds. Thick gaseous mostly
• hydrogen atmospheres, rings, lots of moons,
• and very large in comparison to terrestrial
  planets.
• (Densities are 1.75 g/cm3 or lower!)
• Jupiter
• Saturn
• Neptune
• Uranus

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Mercury

• Mariner 10 reached Mercury on March 29, 1974,
  passing over the planet at 705 kilometers (438
  miles) above the surface.
• On September 21, 1974, a second encounter with
  Mercury occurred at an altitude of about 47,000
  kilometers (29,200 miles).
• Photographs of the sunlit side of the planet and
  the south polar region were taken.
• The last Mercury encounter, at an altitude of 327
  kilometers (203 miles), occurred on March 16,
  1975.
• The photographs of the planet showed a cratered,
  Moon-like surface and a faint atmosphere of
  mostly helium, resulting from solar wind
  bombardment.

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MESSENGER SPACECRAFT

• Launched in August 2004, the Mercury Surface,
  Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging
  spacecraft, known as MESSENGER, conducted a third
  and final flyby of Mercury in September 2009.
• The probe completed a critical maneuver using
  the planet's gravity to remain on
• course to enter into orbit around
• Mercury next year.
• The final flyby has revealed the first
• observations
• of ion emissions in Mercury's exosphere,
• or thin atmosphere new information
• about the
• planet's magnetic substorms
• and evidence of younger
• volcanic activity than previously recorded.

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Venus

• Mariner 10 flew past Venus on February 5, 1974,
  at a distance of 4,200 kilometers (2,610 miles).
• Over 4,000 photos of Venus showed a nearly round
  planet surrounded in smooth cloud layers.
• Venus exhibited a slow rotational period of 243
  days
• Venuss atmosphere was composed mostly of carbon
  dioxide.

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• Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets
• Thick atmosphere that is 78 nitrogen and 21
  oxygen
• Right surface temperature and liquid water
• Photosynthesis necessary for the regeneration of
  oxygen
• Water vapor and carbon dioxide create a small
  green house effect
• Liquid water helps control atmospheric carbon
  dioxide-carbon dioxide
• dissolves in water

http//html.clickondetroit.com/sh/idi/weather/seas
ons/seasons-fall.swf Jeopardy http//www.quia.com/
cb/133803.html
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Reasons for the seasons
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Mars

• The first spacecraft to visit Mars was Mariner 4
  in 1965.
• Several others followed including Mars 2, the
  first spacecraft to land on Mars and
• the two Viking landers in 1976.
• Mars Pathfinder landed successfully on Mars on
  1997 July 4.
• In 2004 the Mars Expedition Rovers "Spirit" and
  "Opportunity" landed on Mars sending back
  geologic data and many pictures they are still
  operating after more than five
• years on Mars.
• .

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• Spirit, Opportunity, and other NASA
• Mars missions have found evidence of wet Martian
• environments billions of years ago that were
  possibly
• favorable for life.
• The Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008
• and observations by orbiters since 2002 have
  identified
• buried layers of water ice at high and middle
  latitudes
• and frozen water in polar ice caps.

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http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mars/

• In 2008, Phoenix landed in the northern plains to
  search for water.
• Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25,
  2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft
  to land on the Martian surface.
• The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and
  tasted the Martian soil.
• Verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian
  subsurface, which NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter
  first detected remotely in 2002.

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Mars

• Phoenix's cameras also captured more than 25,000
  pictures .
• Three Mars orbiters Mars Reconnaissance
  Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Express are still
  operating
• No communication has been received from Spirit
  since Sol 2210 (March 22, 2010).

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter picture-white dot is
Phoenix
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Curiosity Bound for Mars

• NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, sealed
  inside its payload atop the United Launch
  Alliance Atlas V rocket,
• The mission lifted off at 1002 a.m. EST Nov. 26,
  beginning an eight-month interplanetary cruise to
  Mars. ??
• The spacecraft's components include a car-sized
  rover, Curiosity, which has 10 science
  instruments designed to search for signs of life,
  including methane, and to help determine if this
  gas is from a biological or geological source. ??

• Image credit United Launch Alliance from
  NASA.gov

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Snake River Mars
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NASA's Opportunity rover found this meteorite on
Mars. It is about the size of a basketball.
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A search for a planet between Mars and Jupiter
led to the discovery of asteroids
ASTEROIDS

• Astronomers first discovered the asteroids while
  searching for a missing planet
• Thousands of asteroids with diameters ranging
  from a few kilometers up to 1000 kilometers orbit
  within the asteroid belt between the orbits of
  Mars and Jupiter

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Jupiters gravity helped shape the asteroid belt

• The asteroids are the relics of
  planetesimalsthat failed to accrete into a
  full-sized planet, thanks to the effects of
  Jupiter and other Mars-sized objects

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• Some asteroids, called near-Earth objects,
• move in elliptical orbits that cross the orbits
  of Mars and Earth
• If such an asteroid strikes the Earth,
• it forms an impact crater whose diameter depends
  
• on both the mass and the speed of the asteroid

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• Asteroids are found outside the asteroid belt and
  have
• struck the Earth.
• An asteroid may have struck the Earth 65 million
  years ago, possibly causing the extinction of the
  dinosaurs and many other species.

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Comet Kohoutek
A comet is a chunk of ice with imbedded rock
fragments that generally moves in a highly
elliptical orbit about the Sun.
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Comets originate either from a belt beyond
Plutoor from a vast cloud in near interstellar
space

• The Oort cloud contains billions of comet nuclei
  in a
• spherical distribution that extends out to 50,000
  AU from the Sun
• Intermediate period and long-period comets are
  thought to
• originate in the Oort cloud
• As yet no objects in the Oort cloud have been
  detected directly

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• Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, from Cape
  Canaveral,
• Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.
• On September 5, Voyager 1 launched, also from
• Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.
• Between them, Voyager 1 and 2 explored all
• the giant planets of our outer solar system,
  Jupiter, Saturn,
• Uranus and Neptune 48 of their moons
• and the unique system of rings and magnetic
  fields those planets possess.

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• Voyager 2 was at a distance of 13.7 billion
  kilometers ( 92 AU).
• Voyager 1 is escaping the solar system at a speed
  of about 3.6 AU per year.?Voyager 2 is escaping
  the solar system at a speed of about 3.3 Au per
  year.

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• Jupiter has a ring just like Saturn and Uranus.
• The Planet has over 60 known satellites (moons)
  but most of them are extremely small and faint.
• Jupiter is covered by an ocean of hydrogen with a
  sludge-like consistency.
• Unlike other planets, Jupiter sends out a strong
  radio radiation that can be detected on Earth.
• In 1994, pieces of a comet called shoemaker-Levy
  9 broke apart and crashed into Jupiter. This left
  patches in Jupiter's atmosphere that lasted for
  many months.

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• Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar
  System.
• Ancient Astronomers named Jupiter after the king
  of the Roman Gods.
• Jupiter is the 5th closest planet to our sun.
• The atmosphere of Jupiter consists of about 84
  percent Hydrogen and about 15 percent helium,
  with small amounts of acetylene, ammonia, ethane,
  methane, phosphine, and water vapor.
• If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh
  264 pounds on Jupiter.
• The mass of Jupiter is 70 of the total mass of
  all the other planets in our Solar System.
• Jupiter's volume is large enough to contain 1,300
  planets the size of Earth.
• Jupiter rotates faster than any planet in the
  Solar System.It rotates so quickly that the days
  are only 10 hours long.
• But it takes 12 Earth years for Jupiter to
  complete an orbit around the sun.

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Jupiter

• Pioneer 10,
• Pioneer-Saturn,
• Voyager 1
• Voyager 2
• Ulysses
• Galileo.

• The great red spot on Jupiter is a storm that has
  been
• going on for over 300 years.
• You can fit 100 Earths into Jupiter's great red
  spot.

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Galilean Satellites

• Galileos observation in 1610 of Jupiters four
  large moons orbiting provided evidence against
  the Earth-centered universe of his day.
• The four moons are called the Galilean
  satellites in honor of Galileo.
• Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
• Fifty-nine other moons have been discovered
  orbiting Jupiter.

• Jupiter has the biggest moon in the Solar System,
  Ganymede.
• It is even bigger than Mercury and Pluto.

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Ganymedea moon of Jupiter

• Astronomers used photographs taken by the
  Voyagers to make the first detailed maps of the
  Galilean satellites.
• The Voyagers also found sulfur volcanoes on Io
• discovered lightning in Jupiter's clouds,
• mapped flow patterns in the cloud bands.

Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, has craters and
cracks on its surface. Asteroids and comets that
hit Ganymede made the craters. The cracks are due
to expansion and contraction of the surface.
Image credit NASA
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Europa

• Europa is of particular interest to astronomers
  because of what is below its ice crust a deep
  ocean of liquid water, 100 kilometers deep, that
  is frozen on the surface.

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• Callisto's surface is extremely heavily cratered
  and ancient
• The very few small craters on Callisto indicate a
  small degree of current surface activity.

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• Saturn is the second largest planet.
• Saturn has seven thin, flat rings around it.
  Saturn's diameter is almost ten times that of
  Earth.
• The planet can be seen from Earth with the
  unaided eye, but its rings cannot.

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• Saturn was the farthest planet from the earth
  that the ancient astronomers knew about.
• They named Saturn after the Roman God of
  agriculture.
• 100 pound object on Earth would weight 116 pounds
  on Saturn.
• Saturn has the lowest density of all the planets
  in the solar system. It is so light that it could
  actually float on water if there was an ocean big
  enough to hold it.
• It takes about 29.46 Earth years for Saturn to
  orbit around our sun.

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• Saturn's rings are made up of billions of pieces
  of rocks and dust.
• Saturn has over 30 known Satellites, but many of
  them are small and faint.
• Saturn has no solid surface. It is a giant ball
  of gas, but it does have a solid inner core.
• The temperature difference between the poles and
  the equator is very small on Saturn.
• The atmosphere of Saturn comprises mostly of
  Hydrogen and Helium.
• Galileo was the first astronomer to observe
  Saturn's rings.He could not see the rings clearly
  with his small telescope and thought they were
  large Satellites.

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• While the other three gas planets in the solar
  system -- Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune -- have
  rings orbiting around them, Saturn's are by far
  the largest and most spectacular. With a
  thickness of about one kilometer (3,200 feet) or
  less, they span up to 282,000 km (175,000 miles),
  about three quarters of the distance between the
  Earth and its Moon.

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Titan

• Titan is the only moon in our solar system with
  an atmosphere.
• Atmosphere is made up of Methane and Nitrogen.
• Titan is also larger than the planet Mercury.
• Huygens probe was able to explore the moon on
  Jan. 14, 2005.

These three views of Titan from the Cassini
spacecraft on April 16, 2005 using different
wavelengths of light. Cassini's cameras have
filters that reveal features above and below
Titan's atmosphere.
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Saturn

• The Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997 with
  the European Space Agency's Huygens probe to
  study Saturn and its rings and satellites,
  captured this natural color image as it
  approached the planet.
• Seven major rings encircle Saturn

• 2004. Image credit NASA/JPL/Space Science
  Institute

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• The probe was equipped with six instruments to
  study Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It landed on
  Titan's surface on Jan. 14, 2005, and returned
  spectacular results.
• Meanwhile, Cassini's 12 instruments have returned
  a daily stream of data from Saturn's system since
  arriving at Saturn in 2004.
• Among the most important targets of the mission
  are the moons Titan and Enceladus, as well as
  some of Saturnís other icy moons.

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The composite image was made from 65 individual
observations by Cassini's visual and infrared
mapping spectrometer on Nov. 1, 2008. The
observations were each six minutes long.
glow of auroras streaking out
Credit NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University
of Leicester
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Uranus
Enchanced photo from Voyager 2
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• Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun.
• It is the only planet whose name came from a
  figure in
• Greek mythology as opposed to Roman mythology.
• It spins on its side.
• Blue color is due to the methane gas that
  reflects blue light.
• Uranus has no interior heat.
• Along with methane, hydrogen and helium are
  present
• Has rings made of dark dust probably caused by
  its moons collisions.
• Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar system.
• Uranus has 27 known satellites.

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Neptune

• This picture of Neptune was taken by Voyager 2 on
  August 20, 1989.
• One of the great cloud features- the Great Dark
  Spot can be seen toward the center of the image.

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• Neptune became the farthest planet from the sun.
• Neptune's diameter is about 30,200 miles or
  almost 4 times the Earth's diameter.
• The planet was named after the Roman sea God.
• it took the space probe Voyager 2, 12 years to
  reach it.
• Neptune is the stormiest planet. The winds there
  can blow up to 1,240 miles per hour, that is
  three times as fast as Earth's Hurricanes.
• The planet has a system of thin dark rings but
  they are incomplete rings and are best described
  as arcs.

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• Neptune is a sea blue color due to the methane
  gas in its atmosphere.
• Neptune once had a great dark spot similar to
  Jupiter.\
• Neptune only receives 1/900 of the solar energy
  that reaches Earth.
• Neptune has 8 known moons.
• Neptune is 30 times farther from the sun as is
  the Earth.
• It goes around the sun once every 165 Earth
  Years.
• The atmosphere is made up of Hydrogen, Helium and
  Methane.Neptune has a rocky core.

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Pluto

• Neptune has its own heat source, it emits a
  quantity of energy 2.7 times greater than it
  receives.
• A view of Pluto and Charon was taken by the
  Hubble Space Telescope.
• Charon, which is slightly smaller than the
  planet.
• Because Pluto has not yet been visited by any
  spacecraft, it remains a mysterious planet.
• New Horizons Mission due July 2015 to explore
  Plutos atmosphere
• Due to its great distance from the sun, Pluto's
  surface is believed to reach temperatures as low
  as -2408C (-4008F).
• From Pluto's surface, the Sun appears as only a
  very bright star. (Courtesy NASA)

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• Atmosphere of CO, methane and Nitrogen.
• Has an eccentric orbit around sun
• 1/15 the gravity of Earth
• Very little light reaches Pluto
• Surface is ancient compared to Earth-
• Earths plate tectonics changes its surface
• while Pluto doesnt appear to have those changes.
• 2006 classified as a dwarf planet along with the
  discovery
• of similar body called Eris
• and the reclassification of Ceres
• As a dwarf planet-largest asteroid.

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Meteoroids

• Small rocks in space are called meteoroids
• If a meteoroid enters the Earths atmosphere, it
  produces a fiery trail called a meteor
• falling shooting star bits of rock and metal
• bursting into vibrant light as they drastically
  heat because of the friction created between them
  and the Earths atmosphere.

The Allende Meteorite
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• tiny specks of dust, sand grain size, small
  pebbles NOT large.
• If part of the object survives the fall, the
  fragment that reaches the Earths surface is
  called a meteorite