ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, Diurnal Motion, Depth Perception

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy
• Course: ASTR 101
• Professor: David Alan Hanes

Document Summary

There are four ways that we get information from the cosmos: ordinary matter, neutrinos, gravitational waves, and light. Ordinary matter consists of stones that fall in the form of meteors, cosmic rays, and lunar rocks that we brought back from the moon in the apollo space missions. Neutrinos include solar neutrinos from the heart of the sun (focus of work at sudbury neutrino. Gravitational waves was first predicted theoretically by einstein centuries ago and now on the verge of direct detection. Studying light is the principal way we learn about the universe. We observe light at all wavelengths (visible light, radio waves, gamma rays, ultraviolet x-rays, infrared, etc. ) Conspicuous objects that we see in the sky include the sun, the moon, stars, other planets, comets, meteors, the milky way and so on. Imagine earth as an isolated rock in space, unmoving, with no sun or moon. Looking around, we would see nothing but the fantastically remote stars, in all directions.