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Exam 3
Planetary Astronomy
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Geologically Active | Fractured/cracked, volcanoes |
| Geologically Inactive | Craters (old surface) |
| Flybys | Voyager, New Horizons |
| Orbiters | Cassini, Juno |
| Lander | Mars rovers, Titan rover |
| Sample Return | Osiris-Rex, Opollo |
| US spending on the space program | 0.4% of total US federal budget |
| Asteroids | Remain largely unchanged since beginning; orbit in same direction as planets but with greater eccentricity |
| Meteoroids | Sand-to-boulder sized space debris |
| Meteors | “Shooting star”; what you see when a meteoroid burns up in upper atmosphere |
| Meteorites | What’s left of larger meteoroids that don’t completely burn up in the atmosphere |
| Comets | Larger than asteroids, composed primarily of ices; usual location beyond Neptune, occasionally falls toward Sun |
| Frost Line | Only rocky planets can form within this line, closest to the sun; icy and rocky planets can be found outside this line |
| Kuiper belt | The area beyond the ice and rock zone where comets are |
| Oort Cloud | Within interstellar space, edge of galaxy |
| Asteroid Belt | Area before the frost line with asteroids |
| Fusion | In the core of the sun, smaller bits combining to form larger atoms |
| Fission | Large atom breaking into smaller bits, releases energy |
| Solar Flares | reaches Earth quicker, photons/light from the sun |
| CME (Coronal Mass Ejections) | charged particles from the sun, travel slowly, are diverted to poles and cause the Northern lights |
| Drake Equation | Nc = Ns x Np x Fh x Fl x Fi x Fc |
| Drake Equation purpose | Estimate number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy |
| Number of sunlike stars in our galaxy | 20 billion |
| Average number of planets around a sunlike star | 3-20 |
| Percent of planets in the habitable zone | 50-75% |
| Exoplanets | planets outside our solar system |
| Number of known exoplanets | ~5,500~ |
| Majority of exoplanets found | Super Earths |
| Hot Jupiters | very first exoplanets we discovered, gas giants, orbit close to star |
| Super Earths | 2 times the size of Earth, most common kind of exoplanets |
| Transit Method | gives info on period, distance, potential habitability, size, atmospheric composition (water, vapor, oxygen) |
| Wobble Method | gives info on period, distance, potential habitability, mass |
Created by:
sophcm123
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