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Presenting. Presenting. Presenting. Presenting. Presenting. Journey Through The Universe. By: Zeke Clay. The Asteroid Belt. The Asteroid Belt.
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Presenting Presenting Presenting Presenting Presenting
Journey Through The Universe By: Zeke Clay
The Asteroid Belt An asteroid is a bit of rock. It can be thought of as what was "left over" after the Sun and all the planets were formed. Most of the asteroids in our solar system can be found orbiting the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This area is sometimes called the "asteroid belt". Think about it this way: the asteroid belt is a big highway in a circle around the Sun. Think about the asteroids as cars on the highway. Sometimes, the asteroid cars run into one another. When this happens, the asteroids may break up into smaller asteroids. Scientists think that most asteroids are the result of collisions between larger rocky space bodies.
Unlike the other small bodies in the solar system, comets have been known since antiquity. There are Chinese records of Comet Halley going back to at least 240 BC. The famous Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, depicts an apparition of Comet Halley. As of 1995, 878 comets have been cataloged and their orbits at least roughly calculated. Of these 184 are periodic comets (orbital periods less than 200 years); some of the remainder are no doubt periodic as well, but their orbits have not been determined with sufficient accuracy to tell for sure. Comets are sometimes called dirty snowballs or "icy mudballs". They are a mixture of ices (both water and frozen gases) and dust that for some reason didn't get incorporated into planets when the solar system was formed. This makes them very interesting as samples of the early history of the solar system. Unlike the other small bodies in the solar system, comets have been known since antiquity. There are Chinese records of Comet Halley going back to at least 240 BC. The famous Raveux Tapestry which commemorates the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, depicts an apparition of Comet Halley. As of 1995, 878 comets have been cataloged and their orbits at least roughly calculated. Of these 184 are periodic comets (orbital periods less than 200 years); some of the remainder are no doubt periodic as well, but their orbits have not been determined with sufficient accuracy to tell for sure. Comets are sometimes called dirty snowballs or "icy mudballs". They are a mixture of ices (both water and frozen gases) and dust that for some reason didn't get incorporated into planets when the solar system was formed. This makes them very interesting as samples of the early history of the solar system. Comets Comets
The Milky Way The band of light that we call the Milky Way is actually the plane of the disk of our galaxy. The Sun is one, rather faint, example of approximately 200,000,000,000 stars that make up our galaxy. These stars are mostly grouped into a flattened disk which has a bulge at its centre. The Sun is in this disk about two thirds of the way from its centre to its edge. When we look at the night sky we see the Milky Way when we look along the plane of this disk whereas when we look in other directions, out of the plane, we see far fewer stars. There is a spherical component to our galaxy which contains very old stars and spherical clusters of old stars.These are often referred to as Population 2 objects. Population 1 being the objects found in the disk. The size of our galaxy is huge; light would take about 100,000 years to cross the Galaxy.
Black Holes There are many popular myths concerning Black holes, many of them perpetuated by Hollywood. Television and movies have portrayed them as time-traveling tunnels to another dimension, cosmic vacuum cleaners sucking up everything in sight, and so on. It can be said that black holes are really just the evolutionary end point of Massive stars. But somehow, this simple explanation makes them no easier to understand or less mysterious.
Hubble's World The primary mirror of the Hubble telescope measures 2.4 m (8 ft) in diameter and weighs about 826 kg (1820 pounds). It is constructed of ultra-low expansion silica glass and coated with a thin layer of pure aluminum to reflect visible light. A thinner layer of magnesium fluoride is layered over the aluminum to prevent oxidation and to reflect ultraviolet light Shortly after this image was taken, the Hubble telescope was shipped to Kennedy Space Center and loaded into the cargo bay of the shuttle Discovery. The telescope measures 13.1 m (43.5 ft) in length, 4.27 m (14.0 ft) in diameter, and weighs 11,000 kg (25,500 lb). Note the size of the workers standing near the base of the telescope. Also note the orange cylinder attached to the telescope; this is one of the two solar arrays that provide power to Hubble's batteries. Once unrolled in orbit, each array will be over 12 m (40 ft) long and provide 1200 watts of power.
