BUSA, NIZZA CLAIRE GUARINO

MT22KA3

SOLAR SYSTEM
Is the gravitationally bound system of the
Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or
indirectly. Of the objects that orbit the Sun directly,
the largest are the eight planets, with the
remainder being smaller objects, such as the five
dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies.
10 FACST ABOUT SOLAR SYSTEM
1. Everything in the Solar System revolves
around the Sun. The Sun is a star – a massive ball of hot gas that
gives off light and heat.
2. There are eight planets that orbit around the Sun.
3. The closest planet to the Sun is Mercury, and the farthest away is
Neptune.
4. The biggest planet is Jupiter, and the smallest planet is Mercury.
5. The Earth is the only planet that we know has creatures living on it.
6. The Earth rotates as it orbits the Sun. It takes one day to complete
a rotation.
7. It takes 365 days for the Earth to complete one circuit around the
Sun. We call this a year.
8. The Sun is just one of hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy
that we live in, which is called the Milky Way. The whole Universe
has at least 100 billion galaxies in it.
9. You are held onto the surface of the Earth by a force called gravity.
This is the same force that keeps the Earth and the other planets
orbiting around the Sun.
10. Not everything in the Solar system orbits directly around the
Sun. The Moon orbits around the Earth.
 CELESTIAL NAVIGATION
Celestial mechanics is precision mechanics and this allows
calculating the exact position of a heavenly body (star, planet, moon,
sun) in the sky at any given time.
Knowing the position of the star in the sky, the measure of the
angle between the horizon of the observer and the star, using a sextant,
is enough to determine the observer’s position in latitude and longitude
(in fact, we will see that at least two measures are needed).
Let's show this using an example: imagine you
observe a lighthouse from a certain distance. With
the sextant, you measure the angle alpha
corresponding to the height of the lighthouse seen
from your position.
If you know the height h, you can find your distance
d from the lighthouse. On a chart, you can draw a
circle centred on the lighthouse with a radius d. You are somewhere on
the circle.

This is your circle of position.

Imagine the Earth in space, and

surrounded by a celestial sphere on
which all the heavenly bodies are
moving. This is a quite simple
representation of the universe, but this
is enough for our purpose.
The celestial sphere is centred on
Earth with the celestial equator
passing through the Earth equator and
the axis "Earth centre C to North Pole"
defining the axis of reference of the celestial sphere. A plan of reference
defined on Earth is also used on the celestial sphere: the Greenwich
meridian.
DID YOU KNOW THAT
It takes just over 365 days for the Earth to travel all the way around
the Sun. We call the length of time it takes to go around the Sun a year,
but to make life easier, most years have 365 days and every 4th year
has 366 days. We call a year with 366 days a leap year. The extra day is
February 29th. 2012 was a leap year, and 2016 and 2020 will be leap
years.
The same force that holds you on the surface of the Earth so that
you don’t float away when you jump, is what keeps the Moon revolving
around the Earth and the Earth revolving around the Sun. This force is
called gravity and the first man to discover that it existed was Sir Isaac
Newton in the 17th century.
Earth is the only planet on which we know that there have been
plants and animals living. On some planets there is no air to breathe and
on others it is either too hot or too cold. Some scientists think that
creatures may have lived on Mars millions of years ago, when Mars was
warmer and had more air – they try to find evidence to show this is true.
Until 2006, people thought that there were nine planets in the Solar
System. The ninth planet was Pluto and it is even further away from the
Sun than Neptune. Astronomers decided that Pluto was too small to be
called a planet, so now there are only eight planets.
The Sun is a star, a huge ball of very hot gas. The temperature of
the Sun is around 5,500°C – it’s so hot that you can feel the heat from it
on Earth, millions of miles away, and see by the light that it gives out.
The Sun is about 4.5 billion years old and will last until it is about 10
billion years old.

There are more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way and there
are many different types of star. Our Sun is of a type called a “yellow
dwarf”. Scientists group stars together by how big they are and how
bright they are. Some examples are red dwarfs and supergiants. A red
dwarf is a star about half the size of the Sun and a lot less bright than
the Sun. A supergiant star is about 70 times as big as the Sun and can
be 100,000 times as bright.