EARTH AND SPACE UNIT Checklist– Astronomy
Checklist – what you need to know, understand and be able to do for the test or examination
For extra information read
Science Quest 10: Chapter 6 – The mysterious universe
Be able to explain the difference between the
following celestial objects:
Moon – a celestial body that is a natural
satellite of a planet
Planet – an astronomical body orbiting a star or
stellar remnant that is massive enough to be
rounded by its own gravity, but is not massive
enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion.
Star – is any self-luminous celestial body of gas
that shines by radiation derived from a fusion
reaction of its internal energy sources.
Constellation - a group of stars forming a
recognisable pattern that is traditionally named
after its apparent form or identified with a
mythological figure.
Galaxies – a system of millions or billions of
stars, together with gas and dust, held together
by gravitational attraction.
Parallax – is the displacement or difference in
the apparent position of an object viewed
Nebulae – a nebula is a giant cloud of dust and
gas in space. Some nebulae (more than one
nebula) come from the gas and dust thrown
out by the explosion of a dying star, such as a
supernova. Other nebulae are regions where
new stars are beginning to form and for this
reason are called ‘star nurseries’.
Distances in Space
The enormous distances require special units:
Light year - a unit of astronomical distance
equivalent to the distance that light travels in one
year.
Light travels at 3 x 108m/s or 300,000,000 m/s or
300,000 km/s.
A light year is calculated as 3 x 108m/s x 60 – light
minute x 60 – light hour x 24 – light day x 365 =
light year or 9.4607 x1015m
Movement of celestial bodies
Because of the Earth’s rotation, everything in the
sky seems to move together, turning once around
us in 24 hours.
As seen from Earth, the sun, moon and planets
all appear to move along the ecliptic which is
the Sun’s apparent path among the stars over
the course of a year. It is in fact the Earth’s
movement following its orbit around the sun
that makes the solar system seem to move
against the stellar backdrop. In general the
more distant an object, the less it moves in
your field of view. The stars (even the closest
ones) motion in our field of view is miniscule
and this applies to stars and other galaxies.
 along two different lines of sight.
Life cycle of Stars
Structure of the sun
Stars have to balance the outward force of
fusion and the inward force of gravity. If fusion is
stronger the star will supernova, if gravity too
strong the star will collapse and form a black hole.
All stars produce light (and other kinds of
energy) through nuclear reactions, using the
energy stored in the tiny nucleus at the centre of
atoms. These reactions make the star so hot that it
glows – it is like an enormous ball of fire, giving out
light and heat.
The life cycle of a star – a star’s life cycle is
determined by its mass. The larger its mass, the
shorter its life cycle. A star’s mass is determined by
the amount of matter that is available in its nebula,
the giant cloud of gas and dust from which is was
born.
Over time, the hydrogen gas in the nebula is pulled
together by gravity and it begins to spin. As the gas
spins faster, it heats up and becomes a protostar.
Eventually the temperature reaches 15,000,000
degrees and nuclear occurs in the cloud’s core. The
cloud begins to glow brightly, contracts a little as
fusion force and gravitational forces balances and
it becomes stable. It is now a main sequence star
and will remain in this stage, shining for millions to
billions of years. (our sun is in this stage now).
When the hydrogen supply in the core begins to
run out, and the star is no longer generating heat
by nuclear fusion, the core becomes unstable and
contracts. The outer shell of the star, which is still
mostly hydrogen, starts to expand. As it expands, it
cools and glows red. The star has now reached the
red giant phase. It is red because it is cooler than it
was in the main sequence star stage and it is giant
because the outer shell has expanded outward. In
the of the red giant, helium fuses into carbon. All
stars evolve the same way up to the red giant
phase. The amount of mass a star has determines
which of the following life cycle paths it will take
from there.
For low mass stars – left circle above – after
the helium has fused into carbon, the core collapses
again. As the core collapses, the outer layers of the
star are expelled. A planetary nebula is formed by
the outer layers. The core remains as a white dwarf
and eventually cools to become a black dwarf.
For high mass stars – right circle above – if
stars are 10 times or more the size of our sun.
Like low mass stars high mass stars are born in
nebulae and evolve and live in the main sequence.
However, their life cycles start to differ after the red
giant phase. A massive star will undergo a
supernova explosion. If the remnant of the
explosion is 1.4 to about 3 times as massive as our
Sun, it will become a neutron star. The core of a
massive star that has more than roughly 3 times the
mass of our Sun after the explosion will do
something quite different. The force of gravity
overcomes the nuclear forces which keep protons
and neutrons from combining. The core is thus
swallowed by its on gravity. It has now become a
black hole which readily attracts any matter and
energy that comes near it.
 The main sequence
Black hole or neutron star – when the most
massive stars die, they collapse under their own
gravity and leave behind black holes. When stars
that are a bit less massive than this die, they
explode and leave behind dense, dead remnants of
stars called neutron stars.
Astronomers define star brightness in terms of
apparent magnitude – how bright the star appears
from Earth and absolute magnitude - how bright
the star appears at a standard distance of 32.6 light
years or 10 parsecs.
Luminosity - is the total amount of
electromagnetic energy emitted per unit of time by
a star, galaxy or other astronomical object. The
luminosity of an object requires knowledge of its
apparent magnitude and distance to the object.
Spectral class – indicates the relative
abundance of the different elements in stars and
correlates with temperature, so O and B stars are
hotter than K and M stars. Massive stars, also
called spectral class O stars because of their
characteristics are the brightest and the most
short-lived stars in the universe. Range of colours
indicate temperature of stars
(O) Blue – 30,000 to 60,000K
(B) Blue / White – 10,000 to 30,000k
(A) White – 7,500 to 10,000K
(B) Yellow / white 6,000 – 7,500K
(G) Yellow – 5,000 to 6,000K (like our sun)
(K) Yellow / orange – 3,500 to 5,000
(M) Red < 3,500K
Absolute magnitude – the magnitude
(brightness) of a celestial object as it would be
seen at a standard distance of 10parsecs (32,6 light
years)
Big Bang Theory – is an explanation of the early
development of the Universe. According to this
theory the Universe expanded from an extremely
small, extremely hot, and extremely dense state.
Since then it has expanded and become less dense
and cooler. The Big Bang is the best model used by
astronomers to explain the creation of matter,
space and time 13.7 billion years ago.
Two major scientific discoveries provide strong
support for the Big Bang theory:
Hubble’s discovery in the 1920s of a relationship
between a galaxy’s distance from Earth and its
speed. Edwin Hubble used a technique pioneered
by Henrietta Leavitt to measure distances to
remote objects in the sky. Hubble used
spectroscopic red-shift data to measure the speeds
these objects were travelling then graphed their
distance from Earth against their speed. Basically
the farther away objects are from Earth, the faster
they are moving away from us. This became known
as Hubble’s law.
Red shift – is a key concept for astronomers.
The concept can be understood literally - the wave
length of light is stretched, so the light is seen as
‘shifted’ towards the longer wave length red part
of the spectrum.
The discovery in the 1960s of cosmic microwave
background radiation. Arno Penzias and Robert
Wilson were experimenting with a 6m radio
telescope, and discovered a background radio
emission that was coming from every direction in
the sky – day and night. From what they could tell,
the entire sky measured a few degrees above
absolute zero. Theories predicted that after the Big
Bang, there would have been a tremendous
release of radiation. And now, billions of years
later, this radiation would be moving so fast away
from us that the wavelength of this radiation
would have been shifted from visible light to the
background radiation we detect today.
WM
AP data of the Cosmic Microwave Background.
Credit: NASA