Chapter 27: Motion in the universe

Planets, Stars & Galaxies

• Our planet, the Earth, is the third of eight in our Solar System.
• The Sun, which lies at the heart of our Solar System is a star – one of billions that lies
within a giant grouping of stars called the Milky Way.
• The Milky Way is also just one of billions of similar groupings, called Galaxies that are
believed to exist with our Universe – the name that we give to the entirety of space.

Gravitational Field Strength

• Gravity is a force that acts between all objects with mass – any object with mass will
create a gravitational field.
• An object’s gravitational field strength,g, depends on a couple of things:
o The mass of the object (the more mass something has, the stronger its gravity).
o Your distance from the object (gravity gets weaker with distance).
• This means that the value of the gravitational field strength,g on a planet or moon differs:

Note: The gravitational field strength can be used to find the weight of an object using the
equation:

weight = mass x g
Orbital Motion

• In order to orbit a body such as a star or a planet there has to be a force pulling things
towards that body.
• This force is the gravitational attraction of the larger body – if this force did not exist then
objects would not orbit each other, they would simply continue travelling along at a
constant speed in a straight line.

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Gravitational attraction causes the Moon to orbit around the Earth

The Orbits of Planets

• Describe the differences in the orbits of comets, moons and planets.

• There are several similarities in the way different planets orbit the Sun:
o Their orbits are all slightly elliptical (stretched circles) with the Sun at one focus.
o They all orbit in the same plane.
o They all travel the same direction around the Sun.
• There are also a few differences:
o They orbit at different distances.
o They orbit at different speeds.
o They all take different amounts of time to orbit the Sun.

Planets orbit the Sun in the same direction and plane, but travel at different speeds and
have different orbital periods

Comets

• The orbits of comets are very different to those of planets:

o The orbits are highly elliptical (very stretched) or hyperbolic.
o This causes the speed of the comets to change significantly as its distance from
the Sun changes.
o Not all comets orbit in the same plane as the planets and some don’t even orbit in
the same direction.

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 Comets travel in highly elliptical orbits, speeding up as they approach the Sun

• As a comet approaches the Sun:

o It loses gravitational potential energy and gains kinetic energy.
o This causes the comet to speed up – it travels fastest at the point where it is
closest to the Sun.
o The icy body of the comet also starts to melt, and forms a tail which always points
away from the Sun.

Orbital Period
orbital speed = 2π x orbital radius / time period
v=2xπxr/T

• The orbits of planets are almost circular.

• This means that in one orbit a planet travels a distance equal to the circumference of a
circle describing that orbit.

In one orbit, a planet travels a distance of 2 x π x r, where r is the orbital radius

• Since speed is equal to distance divided by time, the speed of a planet is given by:

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 orbital speed = 2 π x orbital radius / time period
v=2xπxr/T

Chapter 28: Stellar evolution

The Colour of Stars:

• Stars come in a wide range of sizes and colours, from yellow stars to red dwarfs, from
blue giants to red supergiants.

(Image courtesy of NASA)

• The primary way of classifying stars from here on Earth is by their colour.

Colour & Temperature

• Warm objects emit infrared. Extremely hot objects emit visible light as well. The colour
they emit depends on how hot they are.

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 The temperature of a star affects its temperature: The coolest stars are red; the hottest
ones are blue

• In Astronomy the colours work the opposite way around to everyday life:
o Red is a cool colour (well, if you call 4000 Kelvin Cool)
o Blue is a very hot colour (corresponding to a temperature of around 10 000
Kelvin).
• By measuring the colour of a star, astronomers can figure out the star’s surface
temperature.

Lifecycle of Stars

Solar Mass Stars

Describe the evolution of stars of similar mass to the Sun through the following stages:
• Nebula
• Star (main sequence)
• Red giant
• White dwarf.

• All stars form from a giant cloud of hydrogen gas, called a nebula.
• The force of gravity within a nebula pulls the gas together until it forms a hot ball of gas,
known as a protostar.
• Once the protostar gets hot enough, nuclear reactions start within its core and it becomes
a main sequence star.

The lifecycle of a solar mass star

• Solar mass stars have life spans of the order of billions of years.
(The Sun’s lifespan is anticipated to be around 10 billion years – we’re about half way
through it).
• Eventually the Sun will reach a stage when it starts to run out of hydrogen gas in its core.
Once this happens, the nuclear reactions in the core will start to die down.

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 • When this happens the core will start to shrink and heat up, starting a new series of
reactions around the core. These will cause the outer part of the Sun to swell up and it
will become a red giant.
• Once this second stage of reactions have finished, the core will collapse completely,
becoming a white dwarf (the hot remnants of a star) whilst the outer parts will be
ejected, forming a spherical cloud of gas around the white dwarf – a planetary nebula.

The lifecycle of a solar mass star

• Solar mass stars have life spans of the order of billions of years.
(The Sun’s lifespan is anticipated to be around 10 billion years – we’re about half way
through it).
• Eventually the Sun will reach a stage when it starts to run out of hydrogen gas in its core.
Once this happens, the nuclear reactions in the core will start to die down.
• When this happens the core will start to shrink and heat up, starting a new series of
reactions around the core. These will cause the outer part of the Sun to swell up and it
will become a red giant.
• Once this second stage of reactions have finished, the core will collapse completely,
becoming a white dwarf (the hot remnants of a star) whilst the outer parts will be
ejected, forming a spherical cloud of gas around the white dwarf – a planetary nebula.

Larger Stars

• Stars that are larger than the Sun have much shorter lifespans – perhaps in the region
of hundreds of millions of years (instead of billions).

The lifecycle of a star much larger than the Sun

• When the nuclear fuel in the core of a large star starts to run out, the star will swell up
once again, but this time it will form a much larger star – a red supergiant.
• Once the reactions inside the red supergiant finally finish, the core of the star will
collapse suddenly causing a gigantic explosion – a supernova.
• At the centre of this explosion a dense body, called a neutron star will form.
• The outer remnants of the star will be cast off into space, forming a nebula.
• In the case of the biggest stars, the neutron star that forms at the centre will continue to
collapse under the force of gravity until it forms a black hole.

Absolute Magnitude

• Astronomers measure the brightness of stars using the magnitude scale. This scale runs
back to front: The brighter the star, the smaller the magnitude.
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 • The brightness of a star depends on two main things:
o How much light the star emits.
o How far away the star it (more distant stars are usually fainter than nearby
stars).
• The absolute magnitude of stars is a measure of how bright they would be if they
were all the same distance away from us.
• As with the apparent magnitude of a star, the greater the brighter the star, the lower the
magnitude.

Hertzsprung-Russell Diagrams

Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is a plot showing:

• The absolute magnitude of a star of the y-axis.

(Going from dim at the bottom to bright at the top.)
• The temperature of a star on the x-axis.
(Going from hot on the left to cold on the right – the opposite way to normal.)

The main features of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram are:

• Most stars lie on the Main Sequence – a band of stars going from top left to bottom
right.
• Below the main sequence (and slightly to the left) are the White Dwarfs.

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 • Above the main sequence on the right hand side are the Red Giants and above those are
the Red Supergiants.

Cosmology

Evidence for the Big Bang

• The main idea behind the big bang theory is that the universe was created around 14
billion years ago in a hot dense state and has expanded since then, cooling as it did so,
to form the universe we currently observe.
• The universe continues to expand, and this can be observed by measuring the motion of
distant galaxies away from us

Galaxies are all moving away from each other, indicating that the universe is expanding

The Evidence
• Evidence that supports the Big Bang theory (red-shift and cosmic microwave
background (CMB) radiation).

• One of the main pieces of evidence for the big bang is the observed motion of galaxies:
o The light from distant galaxies is redshifted, which indicates that they are
moving away from us.
• A second piece of evidence in support of the big bang is the existence of the Cosmic
Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR).

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation provides evidence of a hot dense early
universe. (Image source: NASA)

•
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 o According to the big bang theory, the early universe was a hot dense place. As a
result of this, it must have emitted thermal radiation.
o Over the past 13 billion years or so, that radiation has become redshifted until it
now lies in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
o The CMBR is very uniform and is exactly what you would expect to be emitted
from a hot body – something that other theories cannot explain.

The Doppler Effect

• Usually, when an object emits waves, the wavefronts spread out symmetrically.
• If the wave source moves, though, the waves can get squashed together or stretched out

When a wave source moves: The waves in front of it get squashed together; the waves
behind get stretched out

• This causes the wavelength (and frequency) of the waves to change:

o The wavelength of the waves in front of the source decreases and the frequency
increases.
o The wavelength behind the course increases and the frequency decreases.
(Think about the sound made by a racing car as its moves first towards you and
then away from you.)

• This effect is known as the doppler effect.

The Doppler Shift of Light

The Doppler effect also affects light, changing the frequency (and wavelength) of light being
received from moving objects:

• If an object moves towards an observer the wavelength of light decreases.

This is known as blueshift, as the light moves towards the blue end of the spectrum.
• If an object moves away from an observer the wavelength increases.
This is known as redshift as the light moves towards the red end of the spectrum.

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 When a star moves towards an observer, the light is blueshifted. When it moves away, the
light is redshifted

• The speed of galaxies may be determined by measuring the change in the wavelength of
light coming from that galaxy:

In the above equation:

• λ0 is the wavelength of light for a stationary observer (the reference wavelength, as

measured in a laboratory) and λ is the measured wavelength.
• Δλ refers to the change in wavelength.

The Redshift of Galaxies

• The light coming to us from distant galaxies is redshifted.

(This indicates that the galaxies are moving away from us.)

• Furthermore, the greater the distance to the galaxy, the greater the redshift.
(The more distant galaxies are moving away from us faster).

The greater the distance to a galaxy, the greater the redshift

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• This relationship between redshift (or speed) and distance is known as Hubble’s law.

The Expansion of the Universe

• The fact that light from distant galaxies is redshifted shows that the galaxies are moving
away from us – and, indeed, each other.
• This is precisely what you would expect to see happening if the universe was expanding
from some initial point:
o Suppose the galaxies were originally all grouped together and then started to
spread out at different speeds:
o The galaxies that are moving fastest would move the furthest – the distance they
move would be proportional to their speed: Exactly the sort of relationship shown
in the above graph.

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