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Astronomy Lab

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ASTR 101
Size of the Solar System
Name _______ Section __ Overview
· Become familiar with the scale of the planets vs. their distances.
· Get an overview of the solar system.
· 50 points are possible
Introduction
It is easy to flip to the index of an astronomy textbook to discover that, say, the Sun lies 150 million kilometers away from Earth. It is far more difficult (if not impossible), however, to picture this distance in our mind. In this exercise, we will learn to access the often unpalatable distances encountered in astronomy by simply scaling the huge distances to more recognizable, familiar numbers. So long as every distance within the system of interest is scaled by the same …show more content…

Show your work! 1,394,000/7000 = 199.1428 cm.
6. Which planet has the shortest day? Which planet has the longest day? How do you know? Jupiter has the shortest day at only about 10 of our hours. Venus has the longest day at about 243 of our years.
7. On which planet would you weigh the most? The least? Why? I would weigh the most on Jupiter because the surface gravity on that planet is over 2 times the amount on Earth. I would weigh the least on Mercury because the surface gravity there is less than half of Earth’s surface gravity.
8. Would your mass change if you traveled from planet to planet? Why? No because mass doesn’t change from planet to planet it stays the same no matter where you are.
9. How do the distances between the inner planets compare with the distances between the outer planets? The distances between the inner planets are a lot shorter than compared to the distances between the outer planets.
10. Which two planets are closest to Earth? The two planets that are closest to Earth are Venus and Mars.
11. Find the average distance of Pluto from the Sun. Using the same scale as Procedure B, calculate the scaled distance that Pluto should be on your model. Show your work! 5,906,376,200 / 25,000,000 = 236.25cm ~ 236 cm
13. The next nearest star in our Milky Way Galaxy is Alpha Centauri. It is about 41,000,000,000,000 km. Using the scale from Procedure B, calculate how far Alpha Centauri would be on our scale. Show your work!

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