1/20/2014

To explore:

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Light has the ultimate speed in the universe. Nothing but light can move in vacuum at speed of C = 300,000 km/s

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

How much speed of light? What is light-year, ly? Why light-year is used as unit distance? Locate our solar-system among neighboring stars and in the galaxy. Locate our galaxy among other neighboring galaxies. Our cosmic address =? (no cosmic postal code yet!)
1

light-year = ly? A light-year is the distance light travels in a year. It is a unit of distance. Show that one light-year is equal to 9,460,000,000,000 kilometers or ly = 9.5x1012 km, or 10 trillion km = 1013 km. 2

Lecture 01

Earth

Moon

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Example 1:

Our position in the Universe

Earth to Moon is around 1 light-second

Determine the distance in light-second, light-min or light-years to:

a) the moon at 384,000 km b)The Sun at 150 million km c) Pluto at 9.5 million km d)Nearest star, alpha-centauri at 40 million million km

Earth to Sun is around 8 light-minutes

Sun .. .. Pluto
Distance from the Sun to the farthest planet, Pluto is around 9.5 billion km, which is around 6 light-hour. 3 4

1/20/2014

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

The Sun & Solar system

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Earth, our place in the universe

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/File:Earth%27s_Lo cation_in_the_Universe _%28JPEG%29.jpg

Ordinary small star with 8 planets and few dwarf planets is called: solar system

Lecture 01

Lecture 01

Solar neighborhood

Our position in the Universe

Neighboring stars

Our position in the Universe

Alpha-centauri: the closest with 4.3 light-years. consists of 3 stars A, B & C. It has planets and the place for the fictional movie AVATAR. Barnards star: around 6 ly. Sirius: around 9 ly, it is the brightest star in the night sky. It consists of 2 stars A & B.

1/20/2014

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Our Cosmic city: the Milky Way

Our cosmic city, the mikly way, where around Sun belong to one of its majestic spiral arms.

Milky Way is our cosmic city where our Sun located in the universe. Our city Montreal around 4 million inhabitants Our cosmic city MilkyWay around 200 billion stars

10

Galaxies in the universe are like cities on Earth separated by vast, wide ocean of space.

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Cities could be grouped together geographically into a country. Galaxies could be grouped together into supercluster supercluster: :

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

11

12

1/20/2014

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Our local galactic group belongs to bigger cluster of galaxies called the virgo Superclust. Each dot represent a galaxy. Each galaxy has billion of stars.

Our neighboring cities is called: local galactic group,

2 small dwarf galaxies, LMC = large Magellanic cloud, SMC = Small Magellanic cloud Andromeda galaxy is the largest in this group.
13 14

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Virgo Supercluster, together with neighborings millions of other clusters make the Local Superclusters

It is estimated that the observable universe contains around 200 billion galaxies. Each galaxy contain around 200 billion stars!

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

15

16

1/20/2014

Our cosmic Address

Lecture 01 Our position in the Universe

Lecture 01

Useful links

Our position in the Universe

The Sun is located 26000 ly from the center of the MilkyWay. There is no galactic postal code yet! Therefore, our address can be written as:

http://astro.unl.edu/animationsLinks.html Very useful simulations/animations

http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/animations/ coordsmotion/zodiac.html

26,000 ly Milky Way, Galactic local group, The universe

17 18