THE SOLAR

SYSTEM
What is the solar system?
It consists of the sun, the
planets and other
objects that are in orbit
THE SUN
•The sun is just one of billions of stars
•Many planets have been detected
around other stars but they are much
too far away to be viewed directly
through a telescope
• Planets are not hot enough to produce their
own light
• We can only see them as a result of the light
they reflect from the sun.
• During the night the planets look like tiny
dots in the sky
• Without a telescope it is difficult to tell
•The planets are kept in
orbit by the sun’s
gravitational pull on them
• Most of then planets orbit the sun in almost
circular orbit.
• However for mars and mercury the orbit is more
of an ellipse( stretched out circle)
• All the planets travel around the sun in the same
direction
• Most of the planets have moons in orbit around
them
Speed of planet
• Speed =

Where R is the radius of orbit and T is the time

taken to complete one circle
•There are eight planets, namely,
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
•Pluto was for a long time considered
the planet that was furthest from the
sun
•However it has been not been
considered as one of the planets due
to its small size
•It was considered a dwarf planet
together with Ceres that is found in the
asteroid belt.
•Eris is further out than Pluto
•There are at least six other dwarf
planets beyond Pluto
ASTEROIDS
•Most have orbits between those of
Mars and Jupiter
•Some have elliptical orbits that
cross the paths of other planets
•These have dimensions ranging
from a few kilometres to 1000 km
•There is some evidence that 65
million years ago that an asteroid
about 10 km in diameter hit the
Earth.
•The effect of this may have caused
the extinction of the dinosaurs
THE SUN AS A STAR
•The sun is a star of medium size
consisting mainly of hydrogen and
helium
•Hydrogen nuclei are made to fuse to
form helium and releasing energy in the
process
•The fusion can only occur if the nuclei
collide at very high speeds
•In practice this means maintaining the
temperature of the gas at extremely
high temperatures of around 15 million
degrees Celsius in the Sun’s core
DEATH OF A STAR
• In the sun’s core thermal activity prevents
gravity from pulling material inwards.
• In 6 billion years all the hydrogen in the core will
be converted to helium and the core will
collapse.
• At the same time the sun’s outer layer will
expand to about 100 times its present size and
will cool to a red glow
• The sun will then be a red giant
• Eventually the outer layer will shift into space
exposing a hot, extremely dense core called a white
dwarf.
• The tiny star will use helium as its nuclear fuel,
converting it into carbon by fusion
• When the helium runs out, the star will cool and
fade forever
SUPERNOVAE
• Massive stars have a different fate from that of
our sun
• Eventually they become red super giants and
blow up in a gigantic nuclear explosion called a
supernova
• This leaves a core that is so compressed that
electrons and protons react to form neutrons.
• The result is a neutron star
•The nebula from the supernova
forms new stars
•The supernova is the
“ maternity ward” of new stars
BLACK HOLES
•When the most massive stars explode
the core cannot resist the pull of
gravity and goes on collapsing resulting
in the formation of a black hole
•Nothing can escape from it, not even
light, so it can not be seen.
•However the presence of a black hole
can be detected by its effect on
matter near it or light going past it
•Scientists think there is a massive
black hole at the centre of most
galaxies
LIGHT YEAR

• Distances between stars are so large that

astronomers have special units for
measuring them
• The light year (ly) is commonly used and it is
the distance travelled by light in one year
• 1 light year = 9.5 x km
• The nearest star to the earth is 4.2 light
Galaxies

•A huge star system

consisting of billions of
stars
MILKY WAY

•Contains at least 100 billion stars and it

is 100 000 light years across
•Between the stars , there is thinly spread
gas and dust called interstellar matter.
•The gas is mainly hydrogen
• The galaxy is slowly rotating and is held together by
gravitational attraction
• Our galaxy is called the milky way

• You can see the edge of its disc as a bright band of

stars across the night sky
• It is one of many billions of galaxies in the known
universe
THE BIRTH OF A STAR
• Whole solar system made from rotating gas
(hydrogen) and dust called nebula
• The nebula was slowly pulled in by gravity
• When the outward pressure from its
thermal radiation becomes equal to the pull
of gravity, the new star becomes stable.
• Around the remaining gas and dust formed a
huge rotating accretion disc.
• Accretion means gradual growth by the
addition of material
• Grains of material were pulled into clumps,
and these clumps became planets and moons
MADE FROM STAR DUST
• In stars fusion reactions change lighter elements into
heavier ones
• However to make very heavy elements such as gold
and uranium, the extreme conditions that create a
supernova are required
• To make elements heavier than iron, energy must be
supplied for fusion, and is not released by it.
The sun and inner planets contain very heavy elements.
This suggests that the nebula from which they were made
included stardust from an earlier supernova.
This suggests that the sun is a second generation star.
THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE
• When objects move away from earth at high speeds the light waves
reaching the earth become stretched out.
• This is known as the Doppler Effect
• This means the waves are shifted towards the red end of the visible
spectrum i.e the wavelength has increased
In the 1920s Hubble observed that light
from distant galaxies was red shifted
The red shift increases with the distance of
the galaxy
We are living in an expanding universe
THE BIG BANG THEORY

•The universe and time began many

billion years ago when a single
supernova erupted in a burst of energy
called the big Bang
•All the matter in the universe came from
this
Evidence for big bang
• As the galaxies appear to be moving apart, they may
once have been together in the same space
• Radio telescopes have picked up microwave radiation
of a particular frequency coming from all all
directions in space.
• This may be the heavily red shifted remnants of
radiation from the Big Bang. It is called cosmic
microwave background radiation , or CMBR for short
•The Big Bang was not an explosion into
existing space .
•Space itself started to expand, the
galaxies are separating because the
space between them is expanding
•The universe can be represented by the
surface of a ballon.
•As the balloon expands the galaxies
move away from each other.
•The more distant they are, the faster
they recede.
HUBBLE’S LAW

•=
• Where is the Hubble’s constant
• v = speed at which galaxy is moving away
from the earth
• d = distance of the galaxy from the earth
• = 2.5 x per second
AGE OF UNIVERSE

•Age of universe = time taken to

separate= =
•The age of the universe is 13.8 billion
years = 4.35 x s
THE END