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* Exploring the

Universe
Year 10 Science Semester 1 Reference Science World 10 Chapter 10 Departing Earth from Messenger - YouTube

* If there are aliens, where do they come from? * How close is the nearest star? Can we get to any

stars using our current methods of space travel? * How many stars are there in the night sky? Is this all of the stars there are? * What is the Milky Way? * How does the sun produce light? Will it shine forever? * How big is the Universe? * How old is the Universe

* Stars visible to the naked eye form patterns,

which are called Constellations * Most cultures have given names to the constellations, but modern Astronomers use the constellations named by the ancient Greeks, and some more modern constellations. * All together there are 88 named constellations, many of which are named after animals or other familiar objects, and some after mythological figures.

* Constellations are given Latin names. * For example * The Southern Cross is called Crux * The Saucepan is part of a constellation called
Orion

* There is a constellation called Telescopium,


shaped like a Telescope

* Many of the Brightest stars in the sky have

their own names. The brightest star is called Sirius and is part of the constellation of Canis Major (the big dog). in Orion), Pollux and Castor (the two bright stars in Gemini),

* Other familiar stars are Betelgeuse, Rigel (both

* Not all stars have names, so for many

constellations a method of naming stars in order of their brightness is used. by the beta star then gamma (), delta (), epsilon() and so on through the greek alphabet.

* The brightest star is the alpha ()star, followed

* Stars are so far away that it takes years for the


light from them to reach us.

* Light travels at 300,000,000 (usually written as


3 108 ) metres in one second.

* Star distances are measured in light years, one


light year is how long light travels in one year (about 9.5 1012 kilometres) light from the sun to reach us

* It takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds for the

* The closest star to us is Alpha Centauri, which


is 4.35 light years from the sun.

* The closest of the stars in the Southern Cross is


88 light years away (this is gamma Crucis)
years away.

* The furthest is delta Crucis which is 360 light * Note that the brightest star is not always the closest. *

* Stars appear to move across the sky during the


night, from East to West, and about a single point called the south celestial pole. west to east.

* In fact they dont move, the earth rotates from * To find the celestial south pole draw an
imaginary line through the centre of the pointers and join it to a line through the main axis of the cross.

* Using a long exposure time on a digital camera


shows the movement of the stars. This photograph was taken over 15 hours in winter in the centre of Victoria.

*Moving Stars

* The photographer has used a long exposure to


get the comet to show up, but the length of time it took means the stars moved a little. They have moved left to right. Length of time of the exposure is a few minutes

* The sun and the moon follow much the same * The ecliptic passes through 12 constellations
known as the zodiac.

path across the sky. The planets also follow this path, which is called the ecliptic.

* Stars are balls of gases, giving off heat and


light

* They are mainly composed of hydrogen and

helium, with some heavier elements in small amounts


sun is over 1 million times the size of the earth and there are stars which are much bigger than the sun

* Stars are huge compared to the planets- the

* Because stars are so big, they cause huge

gravitational forces that squeeze the atoms together and create immense pressure and heat. * As a result, electrons are stripped from the atoms, leaving positively charged nuclei in constant state of motion. This is a state of matter called plasma (different from gas, liquid or solid) which can conduct electricity and generate a magnetic field. * In the core of the star, hydrogen nuclei fuse together to form Helium nuclei and huge amounts of energy (this is called Fusion)

* The energy produced in the centre of the sun

radiates outwards through thousands of kilometres of dense gases, causing it to be reabsorbed and then re radiated. This process can take up to a million years, and is the reason why it doesnt all happen at once.10 Amazing Facts About The Sun YouTube

* Surface of the Sun As You've Never Seen It YouTube

* Photosphere is the part of the sun we see * The surface is speckled with granules, caused
by columns of hot gases bubbling up from below. Larger granules are called sunspots.

* The lower atmosphere is the chromosphere * The upper atmosphere is the corona * Prominences are massive bursts of hot erupting
gases that shoot out into space

* Safely See the Sun -- Build a Shoebox Pinhole


Camera | Video YouTube

* NOTE that if you look directly into the sun, you


are very likely to burn your retinas and cause permanent blind spots.

* Not all stars are the same brightness, or the

same colour. The brightness of a star as seen by an observer on earth is called its apparent magnitude an apparent magnitude of -1.4.

* The brightest star in the sky is Sirius and it has * Stars just visible to the naked eye in a dark sky
have a magnitude of +6 (the magnitude goes up as the brightness goes down

* The absolute magnitude of stars is a measure


of how bright the star would be if it was a set distance from earth. (This is because bright stars may look quite dull if they are a long way from earth)

* The amount of light a star gives off is

determined by its size and the amount of matter in it, so the bigger the star, the brighter it is.

* Star colours vary from blue to red. * The hottest stars are a blue-white colour, the

coolest are red. We see them in these colours because these are the wavelengths of visible light they give out.

* By measuring the exact wavelength of light


given off, astronomers can determine the surface temperature of each star.

* Further examination of the spectrum of light

given off by each star can also determine what the star is made of and also how fast it is moving and in which direction. same surface temperature, but if the absolute magnitude of one is brighter, then it is bigger.

* If two stars are the same colour, they have the * If two stars have the same absolute magnitude
but one is blue and one is red, they are the same size but the blue one will give out more energy per second because it is hotter

* Tatooine-fact or fantasy? * In fact, over 700,000 binary star systems have


been found

* Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope has found that


planetary systems are as common around double stars as they are around single stars, like our own Sun.

* Binary stars are a pair of stars that revolve around

each other over a period of time that can be as short as less than an hour up to centuries.Basics of Astronomy: Binary Stars - YouTube * Alpha Centauri is actually a binary system-consisting of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. The orbital period for A & B is about 80 years. Their distance from each other varies from about as far apart as our sun and Saturn to as far apart as our sun and Pluto. * Being so close makes them appear as a single star, unless viewed with a strong telescope. * Alpha Centauri B has at least one planet orbiting it.Alpha Centauri B - YouTube

* When a binary star passes in front of its

partner (as viewed from earth) it appears to get brighter. Astronomers can tell there is a binary star because of the changing magnitude.

* The Life Cycle of Stars YouTube * Red Dwarf Stars-Gliese 581 an M (red) dwarf

star and is much less massive than the Sun, having between a quarter and a third of the mass. This makes it much redder and cooler. Although the four known planets all orbit the star much closer than any planet in our Solar System, two of them are in the "Goldilocks zone" - a region where the temperature could allow liquid water to exist on a planet's surface - though both are probably too massive to be rocky planets like the Earth.

* Red Giant * Aldebaran is a red giant. It has burnt up all its


hydrogen and its core has shrunk while its outer layers are expanding away

* White Dwarf. The outer layers of the red giant

have drifted off into space, leaving a small compact core. The star Sirius is in fact a binary star, comprising Sirius A and Sirius B, which is a white dwarf star * A typical white dwarf is about as massive as the Sun, yet only slightly bigger than the Earth. This makes white dwarfs one of the densest forms of matter, surpassed only by neutron stars and black holes.

* A 'black dwarf' is a white dwarf that has cooled

down enough that it no longer emits light. Thus it is invisible. the white dwarf to cool down entirely, and the Universe hasn't been around that long--the oldest stars are between 10 and 20 billion years old. Therefore there are no black dwarfs yet, but there will be in the future.

* It takes tens to hundreds of billions of years for

* This combined image -- from NASA's Spitzer Space

Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and e Chandra X-ray Observatory -- unveils a bubble-shaped shroud of gas and dust that is 14 light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per second). Observations from each telescope highlight distinct features of the supernova remnant, a fast-moving shell of iron-rich material from the exploded star, surrounded by an expanding shock wave that is sweeping up interstellar gas and dust.

*Supernovas

* Hubble telescope images of supernovas

* Neutron Star: The imploded core of a massive

star produced by a supernova explosion(typical mass of up to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, radius of about 5 miles, density of a neutron) According to astronomer and author Frank Shu, "A sugar cube of neutron-star stuff on Earth would weigh as much as all of humanity!" Neutron stars can be observed as pulsars

*Parkes Radiotelescope in Central New South

Wales is chiefly used to detect radio transmission from outer space, and has been useful in finding a number of Pulsars

* Artist's impression shows a black hole and its yellow


companion star being sent out on a long journey through the Milky Way galaxy by the explosive kick of a supernova - one of the Universe's most titanic events. An aging, evolved star whirls around the black hole, completing one orbit just every 2.6 days. The hole is slowly devouring the companion, which apparently survived the supernova that originally created the black hole. This process makes blowtorch-like jets that stream away from the black hole at a significant fraction of the speed of light

Our sun

* NeutronStarCollide

This artists conception portrays two neutron stars at the moment of collision. New observations confirm that colliding neutron stars produce short gamma-ray bursts. Such collisions produce rare heavy elements, including gold. All Earths gold likely came from colliding neutron stars * Colliding Neutron Stars Produce Gold | SciTech Daily

* Cosmologists are astronomers who study the

universe. * There are lots of theories about how the universe formed, but the current theory is called the Big Bang, which says that the universe began as a hot dense ball of radiation and subatomic particles. * A rapid expansion took place and the matter expanded and began to cool. In cooling, protons, neutrons and electrons were formed and began to make small gaseous atoms like Hydrogen and Helium, and later the larger, heavier atoms.

* Because the matter thrown out was denser in some


parts than others, those parts were more affected by gravitational forces and coalesced into galaxies and stars and eventually planets.

* Cosmologists are still refining their theories, and

have not come to any definite ideas about why the big bang happened, or even if this is the only universe. They do, however know that all the things in the universe are expanding outwards (not necessarily in straight lines)

* Physicists can tell the stars in the universe are

moving apart because when they investigate the spectrum of light emanating from most stars, they find the wavelengths have shifted a little towards the red end of the spectrum. This is called red shift and shows that the stars are moving rapidly away from earth. This suggests that the universe is expanding

* No one knows what will happen to the universe

in the future. Various theories exist, some suggest the whole thing will eventually start collapsing on itself right back to the point where the big bang happens all over again. Alternatively, it may just keep expanding for ever until everything is pulled apart into clouds of dust and gas.

* Either way, it is a long way off!

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