Module 6:

SOLAR SYSTEM FORMATION,

AND OTHER STELLAR

SYSTEMS
By:
Donato, Iza Jay
Antiola , Regina Carla
 Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of this module, the students will be able to:

1. Explain the NEBULAR THEORY of the solar system formation

2. Describe the evidence which supports the nebular theory
3. List the IAU's criteria to be a planet, and how this changed the status of
Pluto
4. Explain what an exoplanet is, as well as the history of their discoveries
5. List examples of unusual stellar systems
6. Explain brown dwarfs and how they differ from stars and planets
7. Discuss stellar system habitable zones and what that has to do with life.
The Sun, our Star, and everything
gravitationally connected to it- the 8
planets, dwarf planets like Pluto,
dozens of moons, and millions of
asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
make up our solar system.

“Solar” – To describe thing

related to our star, after the Latin
word for Sun, “Solis”
MILKY WAY GALAXY

According to the American

Museum of Natural History
(AMNH), our galactic home
is called the Milky
Way after its apparent
milky white appearance as it
stretches across the night
sky.
Two Categories:

• Terrestrial

• Jovian
Terrestrial planets are Earth-
like planets having a hard
surface consisting of rocks or
metals. A molten heavy-metal
core, a dearth of moons, and
topographical features like
valleys, volcanoes, and craters
are all characteristics of
terrestrial planets.
 TERRESTRIAL PLANETS

Mercury 01 02 Venus

Earth 03 04 Mars
 01
Mercury
The smallest and closest
planet to the sun and has
the shortest orbit in the
solar system. Mercury’s
surface is rocky and
covered in impact
craters. It most closely
resembles the Moon.
 02 Venus
The hottest planet with a
temperature of up to 867 degrees
Fahrenheit due to an atmosphere
of carbon dioxide and extensive
lava flows.

This is because there are

volcanic plains all over Venus’
surface. Volcanic activity on
Venus spreads fresh lava. Lava
cools into new rocks.
 03 Earth
The water systems on this planet
help create the only known
environment in the universe
capable of sustaining life.
From space, Earth looks like a blue
marble with white swirls and areas of
brown, yellow, green, and white.

The white swirls are clouds. The areas

of brown, yellow and green are land.
And the areas of white are ice and
snow.
 The equator is an imaginary
circle that divides Earth into
two halves. The northern half
is called the Northern
Hemisphere. The southern
half is called the Southern
Hemisphere. The
 Crust

Mantle

Outer Core
Inner Core
 It is made of solid rock, mostly basalt, and granite. The crust
can be anywhere from 8 to 50 kilometers thick.
CRUST
2 types of Crust:
1. Oceanic – much denser
and thinner and
predominantly mafic in
composition.

2.Continental -is thicker,

and predominantly felsic
in composition
Mantle It makes up most of Earth. It is made up of
rocks and minerals.
 Earth’s core is hot, dense, and the center of our planet. The
ball-shaped core lies beneath the cool, brittle crust and the
Core mostly solid mantle.

2 types of Core:
1. Outer Core – It is hot
that all the rocks and
metals have melted.

2. Inner Core – Although

it is hot, the metals are
compressed into a solid.
 04 Mars
Mars has lost much of its
internal heat. That means its
core is at least partially
solid.
Mars is home to some of the
largest volcanoes in the Solar
System.
Some of the planet’s oldest
rocks are magnetized.
Jovian planets refer to a group
of four planets in the solar
system.

The term 'Jovian' comes

from the name of the planet
'Jupiter', thereby
describing other gas planets in
the solar system as Jupiter-
 JOVIAN PLANETS

Jupiter 01 02 Saturn

Uranos 03 04 Neptune
 01 Jupiter

The most massive planet in the solar

system and the fifth in distance
from the Sun.

It has a narrow system of rings and

79 known moons, one larger than the
planet Mercury and three larger than
Earth’s Moon.

Jupiter has an internal heat source;

it emits more energy than it
receives from the Sun
 02 Saturn

It is the farthest planet from

Earth that's visible to the naked
human eye.
Saturn is a gas giant made up
mostly of hydrogen and helium.
The Ringed Planet is the least
dense of all the planets and is
the only one less dense than water
 03 Uranus

The seventh planet from the sun and

the first to be discovered by
scientists.
British astronomer William Herschel
discovered Uranus on March 13, 1781.

Uranus is blue-green in color because of

the methane in its mostly hydrogen-helium
atmosphere.

The planet is often dubbed an ice giant,

since at least 80% of its mass is a fluid
mix of water, methane, and ammonia ice.
 04 Neptune

Dark, cold, and whipped by

supersonic winds, ice giant
Neptune is the eighth and most
distant planet in our solar
system.
It consists primarily of hydrogen,
helium, water, and other volatile
compounds, along with rocky material,
and it has no solid surface.
The asteroid Belt is a
flat disc of rocky objects, full of
remnants from the solar
system’s formation. These
objects move mostly between
the orbits of our solar system’s
4th planet, Mars, and 5th
planet, Jupiter.
Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and
Hygiea, are among the most
massive asteroids present there.
The Kuiper Belt is a donut-
shaped region of icy bodies
beyond the orbit of Neptune.
There may be millions of these
icy objects, collectively referred to
as Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) or
trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs),
in this distant region of our solar
system.
Kuiper Belt is also home to dwarf
planets.
The OORT CLOUD is a
vast spherical collection of icy
debris. It is considered the edge of
the solar system since that is
where the gravitational and
physical influences of the sun
end.
It is like a big, thick-walled
bubble made of icy pieces of space
debris the sizes of mountains and
sometimes larger.
THE NEBULAR
THEORY
- The idea that the Solar System originated from a nebula was first proposed in 1734 by
Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg.

- Immanuel Kant, who was familiar with Swedenborg’s work, developed the theory further
and published it in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755). He
argued that gaseous clouds (nebulae) slowly rotate, gradually collapsing and flattening due
to gravity and forming stars and planets.

- A similar but smaller and more detailed model was proposed by Pierre-Simon Laplace in
his treatise Exposition du system du monde (Exposition of the system of the world), which
he released in 1796. Laplace theorized that the Sun originally had an extended hot
atmosphere throughout the Solar System and that this “protostar cloud” cooled and
contracted. As the cloud spun more rapidly, it threw off material that eventually condensed
to form the planets.
- The most widely accepted view is known as the Nebular Hypothesis.

- This theory states that the Sun, the planets, and all other objects in the Solar System formed
from nebulous material billions of years ago.

- According to this theory, the Sun and all the planets of our Solar System began as a giant
cloud of molecular gas and dust.

- This could have been the result of a passing star, or shock waves from a supernova, but the
result was a gravitational collapse at the center of the cloud.

- As the denser regions pulled in more and more matter, conservation of momentum caused
it to begin rotating while increasing pressure caused it to heat up
- The planets formed by accretion from this disc, in which dust and gas gravitated together
and coalesced to form ever larger bodies.

- Due to their higher boiling points, only metals and silicates could exist in a solid form closer
to the Sun, and these would eventually form the terrestrial planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth,
and Mars

- The giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) formed beyond the point between
the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where the material is cool enough for volatile icy compounds
to remain solid This could have been the result of a passing star, or shock waves from a
supernova, but the result was a gravitational collapse at the center of the cloud.

- Leftover debris that never became planets congregated in regions such as the Asteroid Belt,
Kuiper Belt, and Oort Cloud
 3 Observable Facts

The planets all rotate in the same direction.

They all orbit within 6 degrees of a common plane.

All the terrestrial planets, which are those within the

orbit of the Asteroid Belt, are rocky, while those outside
are gaseous.
 Other Important Evidence
- The types of Planets and their distributions: with the Rocky planets
being close to the Sun, Gas Giants planets being far from the Sun,
Dwarf Planets or Plutoids, a class of Dwarf planets, are found far from
the Sun.
- Comets, asteroids, and meteorites recovered on Earth also provide
several clues and evidence of Nebular-type development.
- And the motions of most solar system objects orbit and rotate in an
organized fashion.
What is a
PLANET?
A planet is a large object that
orbits a star. An object must have
enough mass to have been
compressed by gravity into a
spherical, or round, shape to
qualify as a planet.
Planets start to form when a
nebula, or dense cloud of gas and
dust, revolves around a young star.
Gravity forces the nebula's material
fragments to clump together over time.
The Latin word terra, which means "earth,"
describes these planets as being solid and
hard.
Mercury is the smallest while Earth is the
largest of the four terrestrial planets.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are
the four planets that are further away from
the sun and are referred to as gas giants.
Gas giants are enormous and lack solid
surfaces. They are substantial gas balls.
Helium and hydrogen make up the
majority of Jupiter and Saturn's mass.
Methane, ammonia, and water vapor
concentrations can be found on Uranus
and Neptune.
The four gas giants each have a ring
structure. The components of a planet's
rings are ice, dust, and tiny rocks.
Except for Mercury and Venus, every
planet has at least one moon. A planet
rotates around the sun while its moon
orbiting it.
Planets not only revolve around a star
but also spin around an axis.
An axis is an invisible axis that passes
through the planet's core. A day is one
complete rotation.
Planets do not undergo nuclear fusion,
which is the fusion of atom-sized
particles to produce energy like stars
does.
Stars glow because of nuclear fusion,
which produces radiation (heat and
light).
Planets cannot generate their own light
because they lack nuclear fusion.
EXOPLANETS
Exoplanet, is any planetary body
outside the solar system and usually
orbits a star other than the Sun.
Exoplanets were first discovered in the
1990s. Since then we’ve identified
thousands using a variety of detection
methods. More than 5,000 are known,
and almost 9,000 await further
confirmation.
From Earth, exoplanets appear to be rather
small. Exoplanets are typically inaccessible
to direct observation by telescopes; thus,
astronomers have developed techniques to
find them.
One technique used by astronomers is to
watch for a tiny wobble in the movement
of a star. The gravitational pull of a nearby
planet is the cause of this trembling. Most
exoplanets found so far are gas giants.