I. Introduction
A. Welcome / Names / Course Outline / Plan
for Night Observing
B. Disclaimers
1. My interest, equipment, study
2. What I do not know – no science
degree, limitations of my equipment (not
Hubble!)
3. My estimations/sources, lots of
numbers and pictures, few formulae
4. I will focus on what, where,
compare/contrast, viewing – less on cosmology, how, why.
5. My faith
i. Scripture
references; no offense: science always has non-Biblical or Biblical foundations
ii. Genesis
1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…Then God made two
great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to
rule the night. He made
the stars
also.
iii. Psalm
8: When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the
stars, which
You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of
man
that You visit him? (This passage greatly inspired my interest in
astronomy!)
C. Our Solar System in the Spring; Beyond Our
Solar System in the Fall!
D. Ask anything…I’ll try! What are your
experiences, interests, and goals here?
II. Home Sweet Home – Earth
A. Measurements/Other: images
1. Diameter 8000 miles; circumference
25,000 miles; mass = 6.0 x 10^21 metric tons
2. Sun is 93 million miles, or 1
AU, or 8 light minutes; Moon is 250,000 miles
3. Rotation 1000 mph rotation at
equator, 700 mph at 45 degrees north; slight bulge
4. 23-degree axis tilt (seasons); elliptical
orbit, at 65,000+ mph
B. Moon: images
1. Diameter 2000 miles, 1/80
mass Earth, other moons are < 1/1000 mass of their planets
2. No atmosphere, no plate
tectonics, no wind: the flag and footprints stay unless impacted!
3. Rotation = orbit; eclipses; no
humans since 1970s
4. Viewing (note the downsides of
a full or nearly full moon)
III. Inner Planets
A. Mercury: images
1. ~Moon in size and appearance;
5% mass of Earth
2. 58-day rotation; 88-day orbit;
30-40 million miles from the Sun (very elliptical)
3. Night -300 F; day 800 F; 0
moons
4. Viewing
B. Venus: images
1. ~Earth in size and mass;
Evening/Morning Star
2. Atmosphere 96% CO2; 100x more
pressure than Earth; 900 F
3. 243-day rotation; 117-day
orbit; 0 moons
4. Viewing
C. Mars: images
1. Diameter 4000 miles; 10% mass
of Earth; ~Earth in landscape; Martian Rovers
2. -150 F to 50 F; 24.5-hour
rotation; 687-day orbit
3. Grand Canyon 3000 miles long;
Olympus Mons 16 miles high; 2 small moons
4. Viewing (never appears
as big as our Moon!)
IV. Outer Planets
A. Jupiter: images
1. Diameter 11x Earth, 10% of the
Sun; 300x mass of Earth (> all planets); 3-degree axis tilt
2. 10-hour rotation (big bulge);
12-year orbit; 5.2 AU from the Sun; -230 F; rings
3. 50+ moons; Ganymede (biggest in
Solar System), Callisto, Io, Europa (< Moon)
4. Viewing (Galilean moons, cloud
belts)
B. Saturn: PowerPoint Slide Show
C. Uranus: images
1. Diameter 4x Earth; 14x mass of
Earth; 98-degree axis tilt; -350 F
2. 17-hour rotation; 84-year
orbit; 19 AU from the Sun
3. 27 moons; methane absorbs red
light from the Sun; rings
4. Viewing; discovered by William
Herschel in 1781
D. Neptune: images
1. Diameter 3.8x Earth; 17x
mass of Earth; 1300 mph winds; -350 F
2. 16-hour rotation; 165-year
orbit, at 12,000 mph; rings
3. 13 moons, Triton's orbit is
opposite to that of the other 12 moons; 0-2 Great Dark Spots
4. Viewing; discovered by two
English and French astronomers in 1846
E. Pluto: images
1. Planet? (doesn’t “clear” its
orbit); New Horizons in July; 5 moons; Charon and its eclipses
2. Diameter 1600 miles; .2% mass
of Earth; 120-degree axis tilt; 30-50 AU from the Sun
3. 6-day rotation; 248-year orbit;
-370 F; 100 lbs on Earth weighs 7 lbs on Pluto
4. Viewing; discovered by Clyde
Tombaugh in 1930
V. Sun: images
A. Diameter 110x Earth; 330,000x mass
of Earth (99.8% of Solar System); 1.3 million x
volume of Earth;
28x gravity of Earth; Surface 10,000 F; Core 27 million F
B. 92% H, 8% He – 27-day
rotation at equator, 36-day rotation at poles; 1 light year ~ 6 trillion
miles; 26,000 light years from Milky Way
center; 230 million year-orbit, at 500,000 mph
C. Burns 600 million tons of H into He
every second, producing the energy of 100 billion
nuclear bombs per
second, or one nuclear bomb per aspirin tablet size of solar mass per second
D. Viewing; solar cycle on average 11
years: sunspots, solar flares, solar prominences, aurora
VI. Other
A. Solar
System scale (Bode’s Law: each planet is ~2x farther; Jupiter is 3.5x
beyond Mars)
Sun
Basketball
Center (SGHS)
Mercury
Pinhead
36 feet
Venus
Small Pebble
Pitcher to home plate
Earth
Small
Pebble
1st base to 2nd base
Moon
Pinhead
3” from Earth
Mars
Pinhead
.5 football field
Jupiter
Golf Ball
1.5 football fields
Saturn
< Golf Ball/Rings: > GB 3 football fields
Uranus
Shooter
Marble
Town Pump
Neptune
Shooter Marble
The Grand
Pluto
Small Pinhead
BT Meats/Conoco
Nearest Star
Basketball
England
B. Viewing the night sky – planets, stars,
deep sky objects, seasons, tips; Star of Bethlehem
C. What we are doing in space: ISS, Hubble
(25 years), James Webb, other telescopes (plus
huge ground telescopes); visiting Sun, Planets,
Moon; civilian efforts; better science, weather,
telecommunications, military, and even
economics and medicine. Also, plainly, discovery!
VII. Solar System 2.0
VIII. Conclusion
A. Joshua
10:
Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when
the Lord delivered up the
Amorites before the
children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel: “Sun, stand still over
Gibeon; and Moon,
in the Valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till
the people had
revenge upon their enemies. Is this
not written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun
stood still in the
midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. And
there has been no
day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord heeded the voice
of a man; for
the Lord fought
for Israel.
B. History vs.
Science: Scientifically impossible, and here’s why. But what if He did do it?
The miracle would
be all the greater! Moreover, He had a purpose in doing it, and it was for
the good of His
people (like other miracles). God is both mighty and good – that’s why I love
Him and His
creation so much!
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