PHYS 190 Chapter 1: PHYS 190 Chapter 1

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purplellama442

7 Feb 2018

School

Simon Fraser University

Department

Physics

Course

PHYS 190

Professor

Howard Trottier

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Document Summary

Scientific notation - system of recording very large/very small numbers by using powers of 10. Field of view - area visible in an image, usually given as the diameter of the region. Distances are first expressed in metres until they become so large that metre becomes too small as a unit. Astronomical unit (au) - 1. 5 x 108, or 1. 5 x 1011. Planets - non-luminous body in orbit around star, large enough to be spherical & to have cleared its orbital zone of other objects. Star - globe of gas held together by its own gravity & supported by internal pressure of its hot gases, which generate energy by nuclear fusion. Light from sun reaches earth in only 8 minutes. Light year (ly) - distance that light travels in 1 year. Nearest star to sun - proxima centauri. Space between stars - filled w/ thin gas. Other words - light from proxima centauri takes 4. 2 years to reach earth.

Related Questions

Which, if any, of the following statements is/are true?

1)Our galaxy, The Milky Way, is a member of The Local Group, whichis one of several groups of galaxies located in the VirgoSupercluster.
2)Most astrophysicists believe that our Solar System formed from animmense cloud of gas and dust about 4-1/2 million years ago.
3)Planets are believed to have formed by a process known asaccretion.
4)Two key elements in the Condensation Theory of PlanetaryFormation are 5)Conservation of Angular Momentum and CondensationNuclei.
6)The name of the second largest object in the Universe is TheSouthern Wall.
7)In our Solar System, the four jovian planets, Jupiter, Saturn,Uranus, and Neptune, are separated from the four terrestrialplanets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, by the Kuiper Belt.
8)Our star, The Sun, is located on the Orion Arm, about 26,000light-years from the center of the Andromeda Galaxy.
9)It takes a photon of light about 4-1/5 years to travel from ourSolar System to the second closest star to Earth, ProximaCentauri.
10)The full range of human knowledge about our Universe spans about40 or 41 orders of magnitude on a spatial scale and about 13.7billion years on a temporal scale.
11)It takes a photon of light about 5-1/2 hours to travel from theSun to the orbit of the former planet Pluto.

An extrasolar planet can be detected by observing the wobbleit produces on the star around which it revolves. Suppose anextrasolar planet of mass mb revolves around its star of mass ma .If no external force acts on this simple two-object system, thenits CM is stationary. Assume ma and mb are in circular orbits withradii ra and rb about the system's CM.

(a) Show that ra =(mb/ma)rb

(b) Now consider a Sun-like star and a single planet with thesame characteristics as Jupiter. That is, mb = (1.0 x 10-3)ma andthe planet has an orbital radius of 8.0 x 1011 meters. Determinethe radius ra of the star's orbit about the system's CM.

(c) When viewed from Earth, the distant system appears towobble over a distance of 2ra . If astronomers are able to detectangular displacements ? of about 1 milliarcsec (1 arcsec = 1/3600of a degree), from what distance d (in light years) canthe star's wobble be detected (1 ly = 9.46 x 1015 m)?

(d) That star nearest to our Sun is about 4 ly away. Assumingstars are uniformly distributed throughout our region of the MilkyWay Galaxy, about how many stars can this technique be applied toin the search for extrasolar planetary systems?

PHYS 190 Chapter 1: PHYS 190 Chapter 1

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