Solar System Astronomy Notes

Victor Andersen
University of Houston
vandersen@uh.edu

May 19, 2006

Copyright Victor
c Andersen 2006
Contents

1 The Sky and Time Keeping 2

2 The Historical Development of Astronomy 10

3 Modern Science 21

4 The Laws of Motion and Gravitation 23

5 Overview of the Solar System 31

6 The Terrestrial Planets 35

6.1 The Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6.2 The Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.3 Mercury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6.4 Venus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6.5 Mars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

7 The Gas Giant Planets and Their Ring Systems 62

8 The Large Moons of the Gas Giants 71

9 Minor Solar System Bodies 76

10 The Outer Solar System 82

11 The Sun and Its Influence in the Solar System 85

12 Life Elsewhere in the Solar System 92

13 The Formation of the Solar System 95

1
Chapter 1

The Sky and Time Keeping

Constellations
• Constellations are areas on the sky, usually defined by distinctive group-
ings of stars (Modern astronomers define 88, if you are interested a
complete list is given in appendix 11 of the textbook). Constellations
have boundaries in the same way that countries on the earth do.

• Prominent groupings of stars that do not comprise an entire constel-

lation are called asterisms (for example, the Big Dipper is just part of
the constellation Ursa Majoris).

Star Names
• Most bright stars have names (usually Arabic).

• Stars are also named using the Greek alphabet along with the name of
the constellation of which the star is a member. The first five lower case
letters of the Greek alphabet are: α (alpha), β (beta), γ (gamma), δ
(delta), and  (epsilon). The normal convention is for the brightest star
in a constellation to be designated as the α star of that constellation,
the next brightest the β star, and so on (although there are one or
two counter examples.) For example, the Brightest star in Scorpius is
named Antares, but is also called α Scorpii.

2
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Coordinate Systems
Terrestrial Coordinates
• In order to locate points on the surface of the earth, we can divide
Earth up using lines of longitude and latitude.

• Lines of longitude are great circles1 running north-south on the globe.

• Lines of latitude run east-west on the globe, most of them aren’t great
circles.

• We define the equator as 0 degrees latitude, and define the longitude

line through Greenwich, England as 0 degrees longitude. This line of
longitude is known as the Prime Meridian.

• Measurements of both longitude and latitude are given by angles mea-

sured form the center of the earth, normally specified in degrees (◦ ), arc-
minutes (0 ), and arc-seconds (00 ). Longitude is measured along Earth’s
equator, and latitude is measured north or south from the equator. For
example Houston is at latitude +29◦ 450 4700 , and longitude 96◦ 210 4700 .
(If you don’t know what a degree, arc-minute or arc-second are, read
the supplement Angles in Astronomy from the website.) Note that lat-
itudes vary between −90◦ and +90◦ , while longitudes vary between 0◦
and 360◦ .

Celestial Coordinates
• Think of the sky as single spherical surface, centered on the earth.
This is called the celestial sphere. The celestial sphere is an imaginary
surface on which we can keep track of the positions of all celestial
objects.

• Imagine projecting lines of longitude and latitude upward from the

surface of the earth onto the celestial sphere. Astronomers call the
coordinate analogous to the longitude the Right Ascension (RA) and
1
You are going to encounter a number of new terms in studying astronomy. When you
do, it is important for you to learn what they mean, by looking for a definition in the
textbooks glossary, or in a dictionary. A great circle is any circle you can draw on the
surface of a sphere that cuts the sphere in half.
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and that analogous to the latitude the Declination (Dec). Any object’s
position on the sky can now be given in terms of these two coordinates.

Time Systems
• The earth rotates around an axis through its north and south poles.
This means that celestial objects seem to move across the sky with time.
In fact, many of our basic time divisions (days, months, and years for
example) are based on this apparent motion of celestial objects as seen
from a fixed point on the earth.

• Notice that this means that we can define at least two different time
systems using the apparent position of different types of objects on the
sky. If we use the sun as our reference object, the time system is called
solar time. If we use stars as our references, we call the time sidereal
time.

• The length of time between two successive meridian crossings for the
sun is called an apparent solar day (the meridian is the north-south
great circle on the sky that runs through the point directly over your
head.) The length of an apparent solar day varies from one day to the
next throughout the year, mainly because Earth’s orbit is elliptical in
shape.

• For everyday use we define a mean solar day as average length of all
the apparent solar days over the entire year.

• The time for a star to make two successive meridian crossings takes
only about 23 hours 56 minutes (as measured on a clock keeping mean
solar time); the orbital motion of the earth around the sun means that
the earth most rotate about 361◦ to return the sun to the meridian,
while the earth must rotate only 360◦ in order to have a star return to
the meridian.

Units for Right Ascension and Declination

• Astronomers normally use units of sidereal time for Right Ascension. 24
hours of sidereal time is defined to be the time separating two successive
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meridian crossings as seen from a fixed location on the surface of the

earth for any star.

• Zero hours Right Ascension is defined by the position of the vernal

equinox. The local sidereal time of zero hours thus occurs at any po-
sition on the surface of the earth when the vernal equinox is on the
meridian at that location.

• A star’s Right Ascension is then defined to be the amount of sidereal

time between when the vernal equinox crosses the meridian and time
the star crosses meridian. (Example: A star with a RA of 21 hours will
cross meridian 21 (sidereal) hours after the vernal equinox. The vernal
equinox will then cross the meridian again 3 (sidereal) hours after this
star.) Notice that the local sidereal time at any location is just the
right ascension of the stars on the meridian at that location at that
instant.

• A star’s declination is measured as the number of degrees away from the

equator (just like latitude on the surface of the earth), with declinations
north of the equator having positive values and those south of the
equator having negative values.

The Horizon Coordinate System

The RA-Dec coordinate system (also known as the equatorial system) is very
useful for locating objects on the sky, but it has one drawback. If I give you
the RA and Dec of a star and send you outside to look for it, where on the
sky would you look? The rotation of the earth means that the RA’s visible to
you are constantly changing. In addition, the RA and Dec directly over your
head at any instant is certainly not the same as that for someone elsewhere
on the earth at that instant. Therefore, besides the equatorial system, it will
also be useful to define a second coordinate system, one that tells us where
to look on the sky guided by local landmarks, such as the point over head,
due north, etc. This system is known as the Horizon (or Altitude–Azimuth)
coordinate system. The essential parts of the Horizon coordinate system are:

• The zenith, which is the point on celestial sphere directly overhead at

you location. Notice that your zenith will always have a declination
equal to your latitude.
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• The meridian, which is the great circle on the sky that runs through
the zenith and the North and South celestial poles.

• The celestial horizon, which is the great circle on the sky 90◦ from
the zenith. Note that this is a hypothetical horizon, and is almost
always different than the geographical horizon where you are, which is
defined by local land forms, such as buildings, trees, etc.

• With the above definitions, an objects position from a particular loca-

tion is then given by its altitude and azimuth:

– Altitude, angle above or below the celestial horizon.

– Azimuth, angle around the horizon measured eastward from north.

The Motions of Celestial Objects on the Sky

• Stars make a circle on the sky from east to west once each sidereal day,
due to the rotation of the earth.

• The sun travels across the sky once each solar day, due to Earth’s
rotation. It also makes a circle with respect to the background stars
once every year (approx. 365.25 days), due to the revolution2 of the
earth around the sun.

• The sun’s path with respect to the background stars is called the eclip-
tic. The ecliptic is titled by 23.5◦ with respect to the celestial equator,
because the axis around which the earth rotates makes a 23.5◦ angle
with the axis around which the earth orbits the sun. The tilt of the
ecliptic causes seasons on the earth.

• Four special points on the ecliptic are the equinoxes and the solstices.
The equinoxes are the two points where the ecliptic crosses the celestial
equator. The solstices are the two points where the sun reaches is
farthest northern or southern point on the celestial sphere.

• The moon travels across the sky roughly once each day, due to the
rotation of the earth. The moon travels on a circular path across the
2
The terms rotation and revolution have very specific and different meanings in astron-
omy. Make you sure you know which is which.
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sky once each month, due to the revolution of the moon around the
earth.

Phases of the Moon

• The phases of the moon are caused by the relative orientation of the
sun, Earth, and Moon, because the sun illuminates the Sun facing half
of the moon. How much of the illuminated face of the moon we can
see from the earth determines the phase of the moon.

• The time for the moon to return to the same position with respect to
the background stars is called the sidereal period of the moon, and is
about 27.3 days long.

• The time for the moon to return to the same position with respect to
the sun is call the synodic period of the moon, and is about 29.5 days
long (the orbital motion of the earth means that the Moon must go
through more than 360◦ for this to occur.) This amount of time is also
known as a lunar month.

Lunar Eclipses
An eclipse occurs anytime one object passes into the shadow of another, so
a lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes into Earth’s shadow.

• Earth’s shadow has two parts:

– the Umbra, or zone of full shadow.

– the Penumbra, or zone of partial shadow.

• There are three different types of lunar eclipse:

– A total lunar eclipse, which occurs when the moon is totally within
the umbra of the earth.
– A partial lunar eclipse, where the moon is partially within the
umbra and partially within the penumbra.
– A penumbral eclipse, where the moon passes within the penumbra
only.
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Solar Eclipses
During a solar eclipse, the earth passes into the moon’s shadow. Because the
moon’s shadow is much smaller than that of the earth, a solar eclipse will be
visible from only a portion of the earth’s surface. There are 3 types of solar
eclipse:

• A total solar eclipse, where the entire disk of the Sun is blocked from
view.

• A partial solar eclipse.

• An annular eclipse, in which a ring of Sun is visible around the outer

edge of the Moon during the peak of the eclipse. An annular eclipse
occurs when the moon is on the part of its orbit furthest from the
earth. Because the moon is further away from the earth, it has a
smaller angular size as seen from earth, and thus can’t block out the
entire sun.

The Motion of the Planets

• Because the earth and other planets orbit the sun, all the planets seem
to move with respect to the background stars as seen from the earth.

• Planets are always seen on the sky near the ecliptic. Because the ecliptic
traces out the plane of Earth’s orbit on the sky, this means that the
orbits of all the planets lie in similar (but not exactly the same) planes.

• Because both the planets and the earth are moving at the same time,
the planets appear to perform peculiar motions on the sky as seen from
the earth.

The Inner Planets: Mercury and Venus

• Mercury and Venus orbit closer to the sun than the earth does, and so
never appear very far from the Sun on the sky as seen from the earth.

– At most, Mercury gets 28◦ from the sun on the sky.

– At most, Venus gets 53◦ from the sun on the sky.
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• Because Mercury and Venus are always close to the sun on the sky,
they only appear in the early evening or pre-dawn sky as seen from the
earth.

The Outer Planets: Mars through Pluto

• The outer planets are further from the sun than the earth, therefore
they can appear far from the sun on the sky.
• The further a planet is from the sun, the slower it moves on its orbit.
Because of this, the earth periodically catches up to and passes the
outer planets. During the time when Earth is passing an outer planet,
the planet will appear to move backward with respect to the back-
ground stars as seen from the earth. This apparent backward motion
is known as retrograde motion3 (e.g. see figure 2.9 in the textbook).

Precession of the Equinoxes

• A torque (a torque occurs when a force is applied to an object in such a
way as to cause the object to twist around some axis) causes a spinning
objects axis to precess.
• The earth experiences torques due to the gravity of other objects in
the solar system, primarily the moon and the sun.
• Earth’s polar axis precesses over a 26,000 year period. This means that:
– The RA and Dec of all celestial objects will constantly be chang-
ing due to precession, because these coordinates are based on the
projection of the earth’s equator on the sky.
– The seasons during which particular constellations are visible in
the nighttime sky will also change due to precession.
– Because our civil calendar (the Gregorian calendar) is based on the
tropical year (the time for the sun to return to the vernal equinox),
the effects of precession are accounted for in the calendar. Thus,
the months corresponding to a particular season will not change
due to precession.
3
Retrograde motion also occurs for the inner planets, but occurs when the planets are
passing near the Sun, making this motion difficult to observe.
Chapter 2

The Historical Development of

Astronomy

The majority of the historical astronomical ideas were incorrect–their im-

portance lies in examining the process of how we learn about the natural
world1 . Do we seek our inspiration from religious, philosophical or aesthetic
considerations? What is the role that observation and experiment play in
shaping our ideas?

Mesopotamian Astronomy
Mesopotamia was the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in
what is today Iraq. The ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia including the
Sumerian’s, the Babylonian’s, and the Assyrian’s, who all shared a common
astronomical tradition. These civilizations left considerable written records
from which we know something of their beliefs and accomplishments. The
most important thing to know about Mesopotamian astronomy is that the
Mesopotamians believed that all the motions of objects in the skies where
due to the actions of the gods. Therefore, the Mesopotamians never sought
any natural or mechanical explanations for what they saw.
Among the accomplishments of the Mesopotamians where:
• Used base 60 number system.

• Divided the circle into 360◦ .

1
In fact the very use of the word natural has certain implications.

10
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• Knew the length of the year and of the lunar month. Because there
is not a whole number of lunar months in a solar year, they used a
calendar that interspersed 12 month and 13 month years.

• Divided the day into 24 hours.

• Used a 7 day week. They chose 7 because they could see 7 objects on
the sky that moved with respect to the stars.

• Invented fractions and algebra.

• Established the 12 zodiacal constellations, in more or less the form that

we still use them today.

• Identified cycles on the sky for the planets and the moon, but never
developed a physical model to explain the cycles.

The Ancient Greeks

• Thales of Miletus believed that the universe is rational (that is, that
the universe obeyed a set of logically consistent laws), and that humans
can understand those laws. He was the first recorded person to put
forth a picture of the formation of the universe that did not contain
any mystical elements. Note the difference in this viewpoint from the
purely mystical picture of the Mesopotamians.

• Anaximander, who lived at the same time and in the same city as
Thales put forth the first mechanical picture to account for the motion
of celestial objects.

• Anaximenes was a contemporary of Thales and Anaximander, and also

developed his own model to explain the motions of the heavens.

The Pythagoreans
Pythagoras founded a school (might also be described as a cult or monas-
tic order, although none of these completely captures the nature of the
Pythagoreans.) The members of the Pythagorean school lived communally,
and women were allowed to join (a rarity for the time!) Pythagoras himself
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left no writings, so what we know of him and his teachings is based on the
writings of others, some of whom lived well after Pythagoras had died. The
Pythagoreans believed (among other things), that:

• Mathematics is divine.

• The perfect mathematical shapes were circles and spheres.

These beliefs lead them to look for a mathematical explanation for the mo-
tions of heavenly bodies, and for them to assert that the heavenly bodies
followed paths that were among the perfect shapes in nature. Based on this
philosophy, the Pythagoreans developed an extensive model for the universe:

• All objects in the universe revolve around a “central fire” (not to be

confused with the sun, which was a separate object in this picture),
including the earth. In the Pythagorean picture, the central fire could
never be seen. Notice that the “central fire” thus represents a mystical
element in the Pythagorean model.

• they believed that there where ten moving objects in the universe (prob-
ably motivated by the fact that they considered 10 to be a divine num-
ber). These objects were:

– The stars (counted as one because they were all attached to the
celestial sphere, and thus comprised “one moving part”)
– The 5 known planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).
– The earth, sun and moon.
– In order to get the number of objects up to 10, the Pythagoreans
invented a tenth object that they called the “counter earth”, that
had the special property of never being visible from the earth.

The Pythagoreans believed that the motion of all the objects in this picture
produce sound, sometimes referred to as the “music of the spheres”. Why
couldn’t you hear this music? Because the music is always present, we “tune
out” the sound! They also believed that all of the 10 moving objects in the
universe were spherical, although they offered no proof of this.
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Socrates
Socrates was the first of the three great Athenian philosophers. He left no
writings, so what we know of him is through the writings of others. Although
Socrates contributed nothing to astronomy directly–being chiefly concerned
with ethics–Plato was his student, and was very influenced by Socrates teach-
ings.

Plato
Plato wrote extensively on a number of diverse topics. Some of Plato’s ideas
relevant to astronomy are:

• Reality is distorted shadow of an ideal (perfect) world. Because of

this, in order to discover the causes for things in nature, we must seek
underlying perfect forms.

• the Perfect shapes in nature are circles and spheres (influenced no doubt
by the Pythogoreans), and the perfect motion is uniform motion (i.e.
motion that neither speeds up or slows down with time.)

Aristotle
Aristotle was Plato’s student, and like Plato wrote on a number of diverse
subjects. The most important of Aristotle’s ideas for astronomy was the idea
that the Universe was divided into two parts: the earth, which is made up
of ponderous, corrupt, changeable materials, and the heavens, composed of
materials that are perfect and immutable (i.e. unchanging.) In Aristotle’s
view, the study of the motions of objects on the earth and in the heavens must
be separated, since the objects in these two realms are made of fundamentally
different materials that must obey fundamentally different laws.

Aristotle and the Shape of the Earth

Aristotle argued for a spherical Earth, based upon (among other things):

• The observation that the shadow of Earth during a lunar eclipse ap-
pears circular.
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• The observation that no matter where you are on the earth, a dropped
object falls straight down. If the world were some other shape, and all
objects “seek the center”, then in most places objects would in general
fall at some angle to the vertical.

• Aristotle’s final argument was a philosophical one. If all Terrestrial

material seeks the center, after some time that material will naturally
end up in spherical distribution, since a spherical distribution gets all
material as close as possible to the center. Note that both this and the
previous argument are built on the idea that all terrestrial material is
naturally attracted to the center of the universe; if this is not true then
the results of both of these arguments are invalid.

Greek Cosmology
Cosmology is the study of the whole universe and its behavior. In their
cosmology, the Greeks wanted to explain the motions of each type of object
they could see in the universe, namely:

• The stars.

• The sun and moon.

• The planets = “wandering stars”.

The Greeks believed that any successful cosmology should not only be able to
explain the observed motions of the heavens, but also incorporate philosoph-
ical ideas, such as Plato’s and the Pythagoreans’ idea of spheres and circles
being perfect shapes, etc. The ideas that formed the basis for the Greek
picture (that survived until the 16th century) where put forth by Aristotle:

• Earth is at the center of the universe, and all celestial objects revolve
around that center.

• The celestial objects are attached to crystalline spheres (or combina-

tions of spheres), centered on the earth, that rotate at constant speed.
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Other Important Greek Ideas and Discoveries

• Plato’s student Eudoxus created a model of the universe that accounted
for retrograde motion by attaching each planet to a set of spheres that
turned independently of one another, around different axes.

• Aristharchus advocated a heliocentric (i.e. sun centered, not earth cen-

tered) cosmology, although view was largely rejected by other philoso-
phers of his time.

• The size of the earth was measured by Eratosthenes using “the well
trick.”

• Hipparchus, who was probably the greatest astronomer of antiquity.

Among other things, he is credited with:

– creating a star catalog containing the positions and brightnesses

of almost 1,000 stars, no printed version of which has survived to
modern day.
– Discovering the precession of Earth’s axis.

• Ptolemy was the last great astronomer of antiquity. He:

– Tried to fix up the geocentric model, in order to get an accurate

description of both the retrograde and non-uniform motion of the
planets.
∗ Used epicycles to get retrograde motion.
∗ Placed some of the spheres such that Earth was not at the
center of that sphere in order to produce non-uniform motion.
∗ Made motion uniform with respect to point called equant
(i.e. not with respect to either the earth or the center of
the sphere.)
– Wrote a book describing all this, which is today referred to as
Almagest. This name was given to the work sometime during the
middle ages by Islamic scholars, and is Arabic for “The Great-
est.” Almagest became the standard astronomy book for next
1500 years!

• Some of the advantages of Ptolemy’s system were:

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– Did manage to reproduce the retrograde and non-uniform motions

of planets.
– Initially was fairly accurate.

• Some of the disadvantages of Ptolemy’s system were:

– There was no justification of epicycles, off center spheres for the

planets, or the equant in Aristotle’s picture.
– Over 100’s of years, the predictions of the model became less and
less accurate. It is important to note that this defect was not
inherent to the model, but was simply due to the limited accuracy
of the data used to set up the model initially.

Islamic Astronomy
The main concern of the Islamic astronomers had to do with religious obser-
vances. These requirements demanded the ability to perform fairly accurate
calculations based on the positions of celestial objects, and led Islamic as-
tronomers to develop significant improvements in spherical astronomy. The
Islamic astronomers:
• Islamic scholars preserved Greek texts that would otherwise been lost.

• Use the lunar month, because the Koran says that a month is a lunar
month. Also in the Koran, a year is specified to be 12 months long.
Because of these restrictions, the months of the Islamic calendar shift
slowly through the seasons, year after year. This is why Ramadan
passes through a 30 year cycle of when it occurs during the year.

• Had to make accurate predictions of the phases of the Moon, since

Islamic months start with the appearance of the thin crescent moon in
west, not with the new moon (again as set forth in the Koran.) This
makes determining the start of the month much more challenging.

• Needed to align Mosques with Mecca, requiring accurate determination

of the position of the Mosque on the surface of the earth relative to
Mecca, using accurate astronomical observations and calculations.

• Needed accurate time keeping in order to determine prayer times.

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Nicholas Copernicus
Copernicus was born in the late 1400’s, in what is today part of Poland.
By this time, errors in astronomical tables calculated using Ptolemy’s model
had accumulated, so Copernicus wanted to compute more accurate tables,
but he didn’t like Ptolemy’s model on philosophical grounds (Copernicus
was very much an Aristotelian, and as such wanted uniform circular motion
back!) In order to rescue uniform circular motion (at the price of the earth
being the central body in the universe), Copernicus proposed a sun-centered
(heliocentric) model:

• The Sun lay at the center of the universe.

• Planets were on uniform circular orbits around the Sun (the earth too!)

• the Moon orbited the earth.

From Copernicus’ perspective, the advantages of this heliocentric model were:

• That it restored uniform circular motion.

• Naturally explains retrograde motion (although epicycles still needed

to get non-uniform motion and exact shapes of retrograde loops.)

And the disadvantages of the model were:

• The earth was no longer at the center.

• There was more than one center for motion in the universe (the earth
and the sun.)

• Still couldn’t get rid of epicycles.

Some important things to note are::

• Copernicus was not the first to consider a heliocentric model.

• The model not widely accepted at time.

• The predictions no more accurate than Ptolemy’s model.

So: why talk about Copernicus?

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• Printing press = mass distribution.

• Renaissance, people started looking at new ideas.

• Improved technology = better observation. As we will see, this allowed

astronomers to make much more stringent tests of astronomical models.

Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei was born in 1564 in Italy. Galileo made many important con-
tributions to physics and astronomy, and can quite rightly be described as
the first true modern scientist. This is because Galileo rejected the notion
that philosophical or religious arguments could give us meaningful informa-
tion about how the natural world worked. Instead, Galileo believed that the
only criteria for telling whether a scientific hypothesis was correct or not was
observation and experiment. Galileo was a Copernican, but unlike Coperni-
cus, he favored this model of the universe based solely on observational, and
not philosophical grounds. Galileo was the first to use a telescope to make
systematic observations of the heavens. With his telescope Galileo saw:

• Many faint stars (showing Galileo that there was more in the universe
than accounted for by Aristotle.)

• Mountains and craters on the Moon (which to Galileo meant that the
moon was another world, just like the earth, violating Aristotle’s as-
sumption that the earth and heavens where fundamentally different.)

• Sunspots, which appeared and disappeared with time (showing Galileo

that celestial objects were neither perfect nor immutable.)

• The Phases of Venus. Galileo observed that the apparent size of Venus
depended on its phase, with Venus appearing largest during its crescent
phase and smallest when it was close to full. This could naturally be
explained if Venus orbited the Sun, but was difficult to explain if Venus
orbited the earth. but were naturally explained if both the earth and
Venus were revolving around the sun.)

• The four largest moons of Jupiter (showing Galileo that other centers
of motion existed in the universe besides the earth, violating Aristotle’s
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assertion that the earth lay at the one center of motion for all objects
in the universe.)
Galileo published all this in The Sidereal Messenger, which caused the
Catholic church to prohibited him from publicly discussing or holding Coper-
nican ideas. After the death of the pope, Galileo approached the new pope,
and convinced him to let him to publish a “fair and balanced”–and hypothetical–
look at the geocentric and heliocentric theories. This discussion was pub-
lished in the Dialog Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Three char-
acters appeared in the dialogs, the important two being:
• Simplicio, who espoused the viewpoint of the pope, and
• Salviati (The hero) who demolished the viewpoints put forth by Simp-
licio, and instead argued persuasively for a Copernican explanation for
the motions of the heavenly bodies.
Because of this, Galileo was tried by the inquisition, and forced to recant his
Copernican beliefs.

Tycho Brahe
Tycho (a latinization of his given name Tyge) Brahe was born in Denmark
three years after the death of Copernicus. From a young age, Tycho was
interested in astronomy, and published works on several topics, including
observations of the Nova of 1571. Tycho–like Copernicus– was troubled by
the errors in Ptolemy’s tables, and resolved to produce new, more accurate
tables. Because of this, Tycho convinced the Danish king to give him money
to build and run an observatory. At this observatory, Tycho:
• Made better instruments, which allowed him and his assistants to make
more accurate and systematic observations.
• Measured the positions of stars and planets over a time of 20 years.
Before he could complete the new tables based upon his observations, the
old king died, and his son cut off the funding for the observatory. Forced to
search for a new benefactor to continue his work, Tycho found one in Prague,
and finally settled down to begin work on the new tables. Tycho intended to
compute the new tables using neither the model of Ptolemy or Copernicus,
but instead using a new geocentric model of his own devising.
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Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was born in southern Germany 25 years after Tycho, and
was a mathematician, astronomer, numerologist (i.e. someone who believes
in the mystical properties of numbers), and a Copernican. As a young man,
Kepler wrote a book on the spacing of the planets (based upon a numero-
logical idea concerning the 5 regular polyhedrons), and sent copies to several
people, including Tycho and Galileo. Although the underlying premise of
the book was questionable, the book showed that Kepler possessed signifi-
cant mathematical skill. Because of this, Tycho invited Kepler to come to
Prague and help him with the calculation of the new tables. Soon after
Kepler had joined him, Tycho died. Before Tycho’s death however, he had
named Kepler as his successor. Being a Copernican, Kepler began work on
the new tables using a Copernican model, not Tycho’s. It took 5 years for
Kepler to analyze the data for Mars. When he had finished, he had found 2
laws of planetary motion:

1. The orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the Sun at one focus.

2. The line connecting each planet to the sun will sweep out equal areas
in equal times.
It took Kepler 8 more years to analyze the data for the other planets
and discover the 3rd law of planetary motion:

3. The square of a planets orbital period is proportional to the cube of

the semi-major axis of its orbit (P 2 = a3 .)
Chapter 3

Modern Science

The practice of science is many things, but bloodless and

coldly rational it is not. Nor, being an activity practiced by
humans, can it be. –William Keel in The Sky at Einstein’s Feet

Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks, but

an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks
is a house. –Henri Poincare

First, some definitions:

• Science: A systematic method for discovering the basic laws of nature.

• Hypothesis: A tentative assumption made on order to draw out its

logical or empirical consequences. –Meriam Webster Dictionary

Premises of Modern Science

Modern Scientists Believe

• Universe obeys a set of fixed laws

• Humans can understand these laws

• Laws may be determined by observation and experimentation

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In order to test a science of hypothesis, in science we require are hypothe-

ses:

• To be falsifiable.

• To successfully predict phenomena outside the scope of the data that

motivated it.

• Be the simplest explanation to explain the observed phenomena (this

requirement is known as Occam’s Razor.)

Some Misconceptions About Science

• The purpose of science is to find “The Truth”. Science is de-
signed to study the natural world. If any of the assumptions we make
as scientists are false, the inferences we make using the machinery of
science will be unreliable.

• Science must involve competing hypotheses (and any pro-

posed hypothesis must be considered by scientists.) As long
as a hypothesis is falsifiable, science can function by considering only
that hypothesis.

• Science is atheistic; all scientists are atheists. Science tries to

answer questions about the natural (and not supernatural) questions,
so science has nothing to say either way about the existence of God.
Chapter 4

The Laws of Motion and

Gravitation

Physics Terms
If you haven’t figured it out by now, scientists are picky about how we use
terminology. We give specific definitions to terms, and then try to be careful
to only use those terms in a way consistent with the definitions (i.e. we try
not to be “sloppy” with our use of terminology.) Physicists are no different
than other scientists in this regard; terms in physics have specific meanings,
and in many cases where students get confused about things, the confusion is
due to them not being careful when they read or use specific terms. To make
matters worse, some terms that are interchangeable in every day language
are not when you are using them in “physics speak”. For example, the
terms velocity and speed have very specific, somewhat different meanings in
physics, so changing speed to velocity in a particular statement can change
the meaning of that statement, possibly even changing the statement from
a true statement to a false statement. The bottom line is, be careful with
your terminology when talking to a physicist or astronomer (or taking one
of their exams!)
To start off our discussion of physics, here are two terms that it is impor-
tant to understand:

• Vector: a vector is a quantity that has both magnitude (size) and di-
rection (note: don’t confuse direction and position; they’re different.)
Examples of quantities that are vectors include velocity, force, accel-

23
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eration, and momentum. When we write down formulas that include

vectors, we denote all the vectors in the formula in bold face, in order to
distinguish them from quantities that are just numbers (e.g. we write
F for a force instead of F .)

• Scalar: A scalar is just a number. Examples of quantities that are

scalars include mass, speed, and the amount of money in your bank
account.

Quantities Related to Motion

In order to predict the motion of an object, we must start by defining quan-
tities that help us keep track of an object’s motion.

• Velocity: In physics, we define an object’s velocity to be the change

in position, divided by the time it takes for the position to change.
We denote velocity as v. Notice that the change in position tells us a
direction, so that velocity is a vector.

• Speed: The size (i.e. the length) of the velocity vector is referred to
as speed. We denote the speed as v. Notice that an object’s speed is
therefore a scalar, not a vector, since it doesn’t include any direction
information. When you are driving in a car, the speedometer tells
you your speed, but not your velocity (because it doesn’t give you
information about the direction of travel.)

• Acceleration: Notice, if an object’s velocity never changed, predicting

its position in the future would be easy; just take the object’s start-
ing position, and use its velocity to project its new position after the
amount of time you are interested in. In most cases, however, an ob-
ject’s velocity will change with time. We define the change in velocity
divided by the time it took for the velocity to change the acceleration.
We denote acceleration as a.

Notice that there are two things that we can change about a vector, its length
or its direction. This means that when something is accelerating, that either
its speed, or its direction (or both) are changing.
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Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was born in England in 1642, and most certainly must be
considered to be one of the few greatest physicists of all time. Newton had
a large number of achievements in both mathematics and physics, including
developing calculus, along with Leibniz. In addition, it is reasonable to
consider him to be the father of “modern” physics, because of his statements
of the laws motion and of gravity. Newton’s Laws of Motion are:

• 1st Law (Law of inertia): Unless it is acted on by an unbalanced exter-

nal force, an object in motion will stay in motion, traveling in a straight
line at a constant speed, while an object at rest will stay at rest. (First
stated by Galileo)

• 2nd Law (Law of force): F = ma.

• 3rd Law (Law of Action and Reaction): For every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction.

If you know the forces acting on any body, you can use Newton’s laws of
motion to analyze the motion of that body.

Conservation Laws
• In physics when we say something is conserved, we mean that the
total amount of that something doesn’t change with time. This makes
conservation laws particularly useful in physics, since we can analyze
many problems simply by keeping track of how much stuff is there
before and after something happens.

• An objects momentum is defined to be Momentum = mv.

• Newton’s 3rd law means that momentum is conserved for an object or

group of objects any time there is no unbalanced external force acting
the object(s). For example, two billiard balls will have the same amount
of momentum right before and right after a collision. So, to analyze
what happened as the result of the collision of the two balls, we add up
how much momentum they had right before the collision, and set that
equal to the total amount they must have right after the collision.
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• Energy is also conserved, although it can be converted from one type

of energy to another. Some types of energy are:

– Kinetic energy, “energy of motion”. If an object has a speed v

and a mass m, then its kinetic energy will be given by 12 mv 21 .
– Potential energy, which you can think of as the energy “stored in
a force”. For example, when an apple falls from a tree, it gains
speed as it falls and thus kinetic energy. This energy is available
because at the same time the apple is losing potential energy, in
this case gravitational potential energy.
– Heat, which is microscopic kinetic and potential energy.
– Rest mass energy (E = mc2 .)

Angular Momentum
• Any body that is rotating or revolving has angular momentum. A
body’s angular momentum depends on two things, the speed with which
the body is rotating or revolving, and how the mass of the body is
distributed with respect to the axis of rotation or revolution. The
further the mass is from the axis, the greater the angular momentum
will be. Notice that angular momentum is not the same as momentum!

• As a consequence of Newton’s second and third laws, angular momen-

tum is a conserved quantity.

• Angular momentum is a vector, with the angular momentum vector

pointing along the rotation axis. Notice because angular momentum is
conserved, that both the size of a body’s angular momentum and its
direction will not change.

• A torque, is a “twisting force, and relates to angular momentum in the

same way force relates to momentum. So, in order to change a body’s
angular momentum, you must apply a torque to that body.
1
This formula is correct as long as the object’s speed is well below the speed of light.
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Mass vs. Weight

In physics, mass and weight are not the same thing!

• Mass is an intrinsic property of a body that depends on how much

inertia a body has (i.e. it is defined by how it shows up in F = ma.)

• Weight is the force of gravity acting on a body. On the moon, your

weight would be less than it is on the earth (because the gravitational
force at the surface of the moon due to the moon is less than the
gravitational force at the surface of the earth due to the earth), but your
mass would be the same (because your mass is an intrinsic property of
you.)

Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation

Any object that has mass can produce a gravitational force, that can act
on other masses. Newton realized that the law describing gravitation is a
universal law (i.e. it applies no matter whether you are on Earth, or in the
depths of space.) This was the final nail in the coffin for Aristotle’s idea that
you must have separate rules for the earth and the heavens.
For 2 masses, gravity:

• is attractive, directed from one mass to the other along the line sepa-
rating the two masses.

• diminishes in strength as the square of the separation of the two masses.

• is proportional to the product of the two masses.

As a formula we can write the strength of the force between masses m1 and
m2 , that are separated by a distance r as:
Gm1 m2
F =
r2
G in this formula is called the gravitational constant.
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Newton’s Laws and Orbits

By using data about the positions of planets over time, Kepler was able to
determine the laws that governed the orbits of planets around the sun. How-
ever, Kepler couldn’t explain why the orbital laws were what they were. In
addition, Kepler’s laws applied only to things orbiting the sun, but couldn’t
be applied to things like the orbit of the moon around the earth, or Jupiter’s
moons around Jupiter. With his laws of motion and gravitation, Newton
could determine the general laws for orbits, and show that Kepler’s laws
arose as a natural consequence of those laws.

1. Orbits are ellipses When he solved the equations arising from the
laws of motion and the law of gravity, Newton discovered that any
closed orbit of one object around another is an ellipse.

2. Equal areas in equal times The conservation of angular momentum

means that things move faster on their orbits when close to the object
they are orbiting, and slowly when they are further away. When worked
out mathematically, this leads to equal areas in equal times.

3. P2 = a3 To see how this law arises, we’ll solve the problem of an

object in a circular orbit around another object (remember, all circles
are ellipses, but most ellipses aren’t circles; the answer we will get for
the circle turns out to be the same as the one we would get if we worked
the answer out for any ellipse, but it is much easier to work out the
answer for a circle.) We must start with the laws of motion and the
law of gravity.
First, we have to figure out the direction of the force acting on the
orbiting body. When we do that we will know the direction of the
acceleration, since F = ma. The law of gravity says that the force
between two objects always points from one to another, so the force
on the orbiting body will always point to what it is orbiting. Since the
orbit is circular, the object being orbited must be at the center of the
orbit2 , so, the gravitational force and thus the acceleration must point
toward the center.
2
Actually, both the planet and the Sun orbit the center of mass of the combination;
because the Sun’s mass is much greater than any of the planets in the solar system, the
center of mass lies very close to the center of the Sun.
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Now that we know the direction of the acceleration, we can look at

F = ma to see how the size of F and a relate. In this case, the force is
the force of gravity, so
Gm1 m2
F = = ma.
r2
Now, lets go ahead and assign the object orbiting the mass m1 (i.e. set
m = m1 ), and assign the thing being orbited m2 , which we’ll rename
as a capital M (so m2 = M .) The formula above can then be written

GmM
= ma.
r2
Notice that there is an m on each side, so they will cancel out:
GM
= a.
r2

Next, we need to take care of the acceleration term. When an accelera-

tion is pointed toward the center of a curved path, that acceleration is
referred to as a centripetal (i.e. a “center seeking”) acceleration. The
size of a centripetal acceleration is a = v 2 /r, so making the replacement
for a in our formula makes it look like:
GM v2
= .
r2 r
In order to make this look like Kepler’s third law we need to do one
more thing: get rid of the speed v and replace it with something to
do with the orbital period P . This is actually pretty easy, since the
period is the time to complete one orbit, a distance of 2πr (i.e. the
circumference of a circle), so the speed–which is just distance divided
by time–is v = 2πr/P . Replacing v with that in our formula turns it
into:
GM ( 2πr
P
)2 4π 2 r
= = .
r2 r P2
OK, now we just solve for P 2 , and the formula looks like:

4π 2 3
P2 = ( )r .
GM
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Now for a circle, its semi-major axis a is just its radius, so that

4π 2 3
P2 = ( )a .
GM

Now, let’s compare this to the way Kepler wrote the third law:
3
P 2 = (1 AU
yr 2
)a3

4π 2
P 2 = ( GM )a3 .

Apparently, 1AU 3 /yr2 = (4π 2 /GM ), (remember that here M is the mass of
the sun.)
Chapter 5

Overview of the Solar System

The solar syatem is comprised of a single star, orbited by several major bodies
(planets) and many minor bodies. The planes of the orbits of the planets
are closely aligned with one another (recall that the orbits of the planets lay
close to the ecliptic), meaning that it is not unreasonable to think of the
solar system as a flat structure. Radioactive dating of rocks and meteorites
suggest that the solar system formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago.

The Sun
The Sun is a main sequence star of spectral type G2. In the universe, stars
range in mass from roughly 1/10 the mass of the sun to about 100 times
its mass. Although it seems like this we make the Sun un-spectacular in its
properties, it turns out that the majority of stars formed are of relatively low
mass, so that the Sun is more massive and more luminous than roughly 90
% of the stars in our galaxy. Over 99 % of the mass in the solar system is in
the sun, making it the dominant gravitational influence in the solar system.
The Sun is composed largely of hydrogen and helium (the two lightest
elements in the universe), with only 1-2 % of heavier elements. This compo-
sition is typical for stars, and in fact for our galaxy as a whole.
The Sun also blows a steady wind of particles outward into space. The
solar wind has pushed out the interstellar gas in its vicinity making a bubble
of radius 100-200 AU, that is referred to as the heliosphere.

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2 AU and In: The Rocky Planets

The largest bodies in the inner solar system beside the sun are Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Earth, and Earth’s moon. All are composed largely of heavy
elements–a consequence of their formation in the inner part of the gas cloud
from which the solar system formed where temperatures were fairly high.

Body Distance Radius Atmosphere Distinguishing

from Sun (AU) (Earth = 1) Characteristics
Mercury 0.39 0.38 Trace High density,
(sodium) heavily cratered
Venus 0.72 0.95 Very dense (CO2 ) Higher average surface
(carbon dioxide) temperature than
Mercury
Earth 1 1 Moderate density Liquid water,
(nitrogen/oxygen) plate tectonics
Moon 1 0.27 Essentially none Heavily cratered
surface
Mars 1.52 0.53 Low density North-south
(carbon dioxide) asymmetry

Asteroids
There are a large number of small rocky bodies in the inner solar system;
those with sizes smaller than 1000 kilometers but larger than about 50 meters
in size are referred to as asteroids. The majority of known asteroids orbit
the Sun in the area between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This collection
of asteroids is collectively known as the asteroid belt.

5-30 AU: The Gas Giants

The area beyond the asteroid belt is dominated by four large planets–Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune–that are characterized by their extensive at-
mospheres composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, and are thus some-
times referred to as gas giant planets1 . The most massive of these planets is
1
They are also sometimes referred to as Jovian (i.e. Jupiter-like) planets.
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Jupiter, that has a mass roughly 0.0001 that of the sun, or roughly 320 times
the mass of the earth. Each of these planets is accompanied by an extensive
set of satellites as well as a ring system.

Body Distance Mass Distinguishing Characteristics

from Sun (AU) (Jupiter = 1)
Jupiter 5.2 1 Great red spot,
Strong magnetic field
Saturn 9.5 0.30 Low density,
bright rings
Uranus 19.2 0.046 Rotation axis parallel
to plane of orbit
Neptune 30.1 0.054 Largest moon in
retrograde orbit

Satellites of the Gas Giants

Each of the gas giant planets has a large number satellites, ranging in size
from larger than the earth’s moon, down to objects a few miles across or
smaller. The source of the satellites is mixed; some formed along with the
planet they orbit, while others seem to have been captured by the planets at
later times.

Beyond 30 AU: Small Icy Bodies

For nearly seventy years, it was difficult to know what to make of Pluto. Was
it a one-of-a-kind oddball in the solar system, or only one of a number of icy
bodies orbiting the Sun in the outer solar system? In the last 10-15 years
many icy bodies similar in size to Pluto have been discovered in the outer
solar system, indicating that it is not an oddball. The properties of these
newly discovered bodies have been a great surprise, and have sparked new
interest in studying how the early outer solar system evolved.

Comets
In the same way that the inner solar system contains many small rocky bodies
(asteroids), the outer solar system is home to many small icy/rocky bodies–
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comets. On occasion–due to gravitational interactions with larger bodies in

the outer solar system–some comets end up on orbits that bring them into
the inner solar system. This ultimately spells the destruction of these comets,
since on each passage through the inner solar system the material making of
the comet is vaporized and blown away by the Sun.
Chapter 6

The Terrestrial Planets

When studying the planets and large moons in the solar system, it makes
sense to divide the planets up into 4 categories:

1. the rocky inner planets and moons,

2. the gas giant planets,

3. the icy/rocky outer moons of the gas giants, and

4. Pluto and the other outer solar system objects.

The key is then to study each group, trying to understand the overall prop-
erties of the group as a whole. We will first study the inner, rocky planets
and moons (i.e. the terrestrial planets).

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6.1 The Earth

The most important rocky planet we will study is the earth. This is because
we know much more about the earth than any other planet. When planetary
geologists study other planets, they use our understanding of the structure
and properties of the earth, and of the processes that lead to the earth being
as it is to interpret what they see on other worlds.

The Earth’s Interior

The earth has a radius of a little under 6400 km. The deepest hole that has
yet been drilled in the crust of the earth has a depth of just over 12 km.
Clearly, if we want to learn about the interior of the earth or other terrestrial
planets, we must use indirect means to get the information.

Average Density
An object’s density is defined to be its mass divided by its volume. Different
materials have different densities, so one way to tell the difference between
objects is compare their densities. For terrestrial planets, we actually need
to distinguish between two different types of density:
• Compressed Density This is the actual density we measure for a
planet or moon. Because the interior parts of the body must support
the weight of all the material above the interior, the central material
tends to compress making the average density higher than it would be
without compression. The compressed density of the earth is 5.5 times
the density of liquid water.
• Uncompressed Density With an estimate of the composition of a
planet, it is possible to use its compressed density to make an estimate
of its uncompressed density. In general, the larger the mass of a planet,
the greater the difference between its compressed and uncompressed
density. The uncompressed density of the earth is estimated to be 4.3
times that of liquid water.
The average density of the rocks on the surface of the earth is in the range
2.5-3.3 times that of liquid water. Therefore, the density of the materials
making up the earth’s outer parts is lower than that of the planet as a whole,
and so the interior of the planet must be composed of more dense materials.
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Waves
A wave is a traveling disturbance that transports energy, without transport-
ing material. Waves have the following general properties:

• Amplitude A measure of the “height” of a wave. For a wave of a

particular frequency, the amount of energy carried by the wave increases
as the amplitude squared.

• Wavelength The distance separating two successive peaks or troughs

in a wave. We usually denote the wavelength of a wave with the Greek
letter lambda (λ).

• Period The time for two successive peaks or troughs (i.e. one whole
wavelength) to pass a fixed position, usually denoted as T .

• Frequency The total number of waves to pass a fixed location per

second, denoted as f . Notice that f = 1/T .

• Speed The speed of anything that travels is simply the distance trav-
eled divided by the time it takes to travel that distance. Thus: for a
wave v = λ/T , or, in terms of the frequency, v = λf.

Seismic Waves
Waves that pass through the earth are known as seismic waves. There are
two types of seismic waves that pass through the body of the earth:

• Primary (P) waves In a P wave, the oscillations occur in the same

direction as the wave is traveling. P waves are the fastest seismic
waves, and so arrive at the seismograph first, which is why they are
called primary waves.

• Secondary (S) waves In an S wave, the direction of oscillation is

perpendicular to the direction of wave travel. S waves arrive at the
seismograph after the P waves, and thus are called secondary waves.

The Earth’s Internal Structure

By analyzing the seismic waves that arrive at different positions from around
the earth relative to where an earthquake has occurred, we gain information
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about the regions in the earth that the waves must have traveled through.
An important difference between P and S waves that helps us understand
the interior of the earth is that S waves can’t pass through liquids, while P
waves can. Seismologists have discovered that the for a region surrounding
the the point on the earth opposite the position where an earthquake occurs,
no S waves are ever observed, but P waves are. This “S wave shadow” shows
that at least some of the central regions of the earth must be liquid.
We can divide up the interior of the earth based upon either the physical
properties of the materials, or using their composition (i.e. their chemical
makeup). If we divide by properties, the earth has the following internal
structure (from outside to in):

• Lithosphere: the outer 100 km or so of the earth’s surface is composed

of rocks that are rigid and strong, and thus not easily deformed.

• Asthenosphere: in the region from about 100 km down to 350 km,

the temperature and pressure the rocks are experiencing make them
easily deformable (but not liquid.)

• Mesosphere: as we move inward the pressure increases, causing the

rocks at depths between 350 and 2900 km to become strong and rigid
a gain.

• Outer Core: in the outer core (at depths of 2900 km to 5140 km), the
temperature becomes high enough for the material there to become
molten (i.e. liquid). The “S wave shadow” is created by the outer,
liquid core.

• Inner Core: deeper in the core, the pressure continues to rise, in-
creasing the melting point of the materials there until they exceed the
temperature in that part of the core. The inner core of the earth is
therefore solid, even though the outer core, that is at a lower temper-
ature, is liquid.

If we instead look at the makeup of the earth’s interior, we divide it

somewhat differently:

• Crust: The outer parts of the earth can be divided into two types of
crustal material: continental crust and oceanic crust. The continental
crust can range from 20 to 70 km thick, and is composed largely of
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rocks with relatively high silica content. The oceanic crust is thinner
(typically around 10 km thick), and is composed of rock with lower
silica content.
• Mantle: We know little about the composition of the earth’s mantle,
which extends from the crust to the outer core. Analysis of the speeds of
seismic waves traveling through the mantle, along with the few samples
geologists think represent mantle material, suggest that it is made up
of rocks that are more dense than those of the crust.
• Core: The high density of the core, combined with the fact that iron
is by far the most common heavy element in the universe suggests that
the core of the earth is composed largely of iron.

Sources of Earth’s Internal Heat

The core of the earth is at a temperature of over 5000◦ . A major source
of the heat that maintains this high temperature is the decay of radioactive
materials such as uranium in the earth’s core.

Magnetic Fields
Magnets have at least two poles, with two possible magnetic polarities, North
and South seeking. Magnetic fields are created by moving electric charges
(i.e. an electric current.) Electric charges that are stationary in a magnetic
field experience no force due to that magnetic field. Moving charges may
experience a force due to a magnetic field. Whether they do or don’t depends
on the direction of the particle’s velocity vector relative to the direction of the
magnetic field lines. If the velocity vector of the charged particle is parallel
to the field lines, no force is experienced. If, on the other hand, the velocity
vector cuts across the field lines, the particle will experience a force due to the
field. The direction of the force that the particle experiences is perpendicular
both to the direction of the magnetic field line and the velocity vector of the
particle.
Therefore the magnetic force allows charged particles to move freely along
magnetic field lines. Motion perpendicular to the field lines causes the par-
ticle to circle the field line instead. The combination of these two motions
in general causes charged particles to spiral around magnetic field lines. Be-
cause of this, magnetic fields can serve as “traps” for charged particles, in
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which the particles spiral around the field lines, but cannot easily exit the
region where the magnetic field is.

Earth’s Magnetic Field

Because planetary magnetic fields are generated deep in the core of planets,
they also give us information about the central regions of a planet. The
earth’s magnetic field has the following characteristics:

• The Earth’s magnetic field currently has a structure similar to that of a

bar magnet. Such a field is sometimes referred to as a dipole magnetic
field.

• The earth’s field is created by convection in the outer core. The cir-
culation gives rise to electric currents that produce the field. In turn,
the field that is produced tends to reinforce the current flow. A field
that is produced in this manner is sometimes referred to as a dynamo
magnetic field. This dynamo action is capable of maintaining an exist-
ing magnetic field, but is not able to produce a field where non existed.
Therefore Earth’s initial field must have been created by some other
mechanism.

• The region around the earth where its magnetic field dominates the
solar magnetic field is called the magnetosphere.

– The solar wind (speed = 400-800 km/s, about 1,000,000 mph)

forms a bow shock where it encounters the magnetosphere, and
blows out a long magneto-tail on the side of the earth opposite
the Sun.
– The Van Allen Belts are belts where energetic charged particles
are trapped in the earth’s magnetic field.

• Analysis of magnetic grains in volcanic rocks shows that there have

been a number of magnetic field reversals, typically occurring every
100,000 years or so. Geophysicists still don’t completely understand
what causes this to happen.
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Plate Tectonics
The earth’s crust is not a single piece, but instead is made up of 7 major,
and many minor tectonic plates. These plates are in constant motion; the
arrangement of continents on the surface of the earth is changing over geologic
time. This motion is possible because the easily deformable asthenosphere
is fairly close to the surface in the earth, and because the sources of internal
heat in the planet are sufficient to drive plate motion due to convection in
Earth’s mantle.
The boundaries of the plates are places of particular importance, since
they are locations where the greatest change in the surface of the earth due
to plate motion that is occurring. In fact, plate boundaries are the most
frequent sites for both active volcanism and earthquakes.
Types of plate boundaries:

• Convergent: at a convergent boundary, the plates are moving toward

one another. At a convergent boundary, one plate will be forced below
the other, and driven down into the mantle; this process is called sub-
duction. If a continental plate is subducting another continental plate,
the over riding plate will be forced upward, creating folded mountain
belts. Current examples where this is happening include the Himalayas
and the Alps.

• Divergent: at a divergent boundary, the plates are moving away from

one another, which creates a rift between the plates. If both the plates
are oceanic plates, new material will rise from lower levels to fill in the
rift. A current example of this is the mid-Atlantic ridge.

• Transform: at a transform boundary, the plates are sliding past one

another. Transform boundaries are often sites of intense earthquakes.
A current example of a transform boundary is the San Andreas fault
in California.

Volcanism
Volcanism is a process where molten rock is extruded from below Earth’s
surface. The nature of a volcanic region depends on the viscosity of lava
erupted there. Lava’s of low viscosity will easily flow away from the site of
the eruption, while high viscosity will pile up near the eruption site. Because
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the viscosity depends on the silica content of the lava being erupted, and
because the lava is nothing more than melted rock, the structure of a volcano
can immediately tell a trained geologist something about the composition of
the crust in the area where the volcano occurs.

Viscosity vs. Silica Content

Magma Type Silica Content Viscosity

Felsic > 65% High
Intermediate 52-65 % Moderate
Mafic 45-52 % Low
Ultra-Mafic < 45% Very Low

Types of Volcanoes
• Shield: result from the eruption of fairly low viscosity lava. This leads
to a fairly broad, slowly sloping volcano. (Example: Mauna Kea and
other volcanoes in the Hawaiian islands)

• Strato-volcanoes: result from eruptions of lava that is largely of in-

termediate viscosity. This leads to a volcano that is conical in shape,
with fairly steep sides (examples include Mount St. Helens and Mt.
Fuji.) Strato-volcanoes are also called composite volcanoes.

• Cinder cones: are due to eruptions of high viscosity lava, making

them very steep sided. Cinder cones are small, and their activity short
lived. The viscosity of the lava is so high that the eruptions are ex-
plosive; the erupted materials take the form of pyroclasts (“pieces of
hot rock”.) The cinder cone is formed by the accumulation of these
pyroclasts around the vent from which they are erupted.

• Fissure Eruptions: Sometimes lava will reach this surface via long
fissures (up to tens of miles long or more.) The lava extruded from these
fissures tends to be of extremely low viscosity, that tends to spread out
over large areas around the fissure, forming what are known as basaltic
plains.
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Earth’s Atmosphere
Earth’s atmosphere is composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), argon (1%)
(percents by number), as well as various trace gases, such as carbon dioxide
and water vapor. This is a strange composition for a planetary atmosphere,
since oxygen will easily combine with other chemicals. The presence of an
oxygen rich atmosphere is a due to the action of plant-life on the earth.

Layers in the Atmosphere

• Troposphere: the lowest 10 km or so of the earth’s atmosphere. The
temperature drops steadily as you move upward in the troposphere,
because convection is fairly strong in this layer.

• Stratosphere: from approximately 10 to 30 km above the surface.

The temperature changes very little with height, due to little convection
occurring in this layer.

• Mesosphere1 : from 30 to 80 km above the surface, the temperature

actually rises, due to absorption of UV light by the ozone layer.

• Ionosphere: Above about 100 km, some fraction of the atmosphere

is ionized (i.e. electrons are stripped from atoms or molecules), mean-
ing that there are free positively and negatively charged particles in
the atmosphere. The ions are produced by the atoms and molecules
absorbing short wavelength UV and x-rays from the sun.

The Greenhouse Effect

If Earth had no atmosphere, its surface temperature would be determined by
the balance of the rate at which its surface absorbed solar radiation, and the
rate it emitted radiation (remember, any object with a temperature above
absolute zero will radiate). It turns out that the average surface temperature
for the earth in this case would be below 0◦ C. Earth’s surface actual average
surface temperature is above the freezing point of water because of the effect
of its atmosphere, and is known as the greenhouse effect:
1
You may have noticed that both Earth’s interior and atmosphere have a layer known
as the mesosphere. The prefix meso just means middle, so both layers are the result of
some particularly un-inspired naming on the part of Earth scientists.
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• Certain gases (notably water vapor and carbon dioxide, although there
are others) are transparent to electromagnetic radiation in the visible
part of the spectrum, but strongly absorb electromagnetic radiation in
the infrared part of the spectrum.

• Visible light can penetrate to the earth’s surface and be absorbed,

heating the surface. Earth radiates some of the absorbed energy. At
the temperature of the earth’s surface, most of its energy is radiated in
the infrared part of the spectrum.

• This radiated energy is absorbed in the atmosphere by carbon dioxide

and water vapor (as well as other gases), heating the atmosphere.

• The heated atmosphere radiates energy, some of which travels down-

ward to be absorbed by the ground, raising its temperature above what
it would be due to heating by direct sunlight alone.

• The net effect of this process is that the surface and troposphere of
the earth will contain more energy than they would in the absence of
any atmosphere. This increased energy can take different forms, in-
cluding higher temperatures, increased amounts of water vapor in the
atmosphere, etc. This is what people mean when they refer to the
greenhouse effect, and is not synonymous with global warming, which
is a change of average surface temperatures presumably induced by an
increased efficiency of the green house effect produced by increased con-
centrations of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere due to the burning
of fossil fuels.

Water on Earth
One feature that distinguishes Earth from the other terrestrial planets in
the solar system is the abundance of liquid water on its surface. This is
important in the evolution of the earth in several ways:

1. Water is an important agent in altering the surface of the earth by

weathering, by such processes as erosion and glaciation.

2. The presence of liquid water throughout Earth’s past has significantly

changed the earth’s atmosphere. Water acts to remove carbon dioxide
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from the atmosphere. In addition it is important for the production of

life on the earth.

3. Simple aquatic plants (mostly algaes) are important for producing at-
mospheric oxygen via photosynthesis.

The History of the Earth

The evolutionary history of the earth can be divided into several distinct
stages (note: byrs = billions of years):

• Accretion (4.6-3.8 byrs ago) During this phase, the earth was being
built up by collisions with smaller solar system bodies and was largely
molten. The sinking of the more dense materials to form Earth’s core
(differentiation) occurred during this period.

• Continent growth (3.8-2.5 byrs ago) During this phase, the conti-
nents and ocean basins are formed, and the first life appears.

• Continents Stabilize (2.5-0.6 byrs ago) Oxygen is released into earth’s

atmosphere by early plants (remember, these plants were largely algae!)

• Modern Tectonics (0.6 byrs-present) Evolution of the surface is largely

controlled by global tectonics, as well as the weathering influence of the
atmosphere and liquid water.
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6.2 The Moon

The surface of the moon shows two distinctive types of terrain: lighter col-
ored regions that are known as the lunar highlands, and darker regions that
are known as maria (singular mare.) The highlands are the oldest exposed
regions on the surface of the moon, while the maria are large flows of low vis-
cosity lava, which occurred somewhat after the highlands had formed. The
near side of the moon to the earth shows large areas of both highlands and
maria, while the side facing away is composed almost exclusively of highlands.

Tides and the Moon’s Rotation

The moon always shows the same face to the earth. This is due to the
effects of tides produced by the earth on the moon. Tides occur because of
the form of Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, in particular because
of the fact that the gravitational force drops off as 1/r2 . Because of this,
the gravitational force due to the earth on the moon is largest on the near
side, and decreases continually as you move toward the far side. The earth
thus distorts the shape of the moon slightly, so that the moon is elongated
along the line separating the centers of the earth and moon. The earth can
then produce a torque on this tidal bulge that act to keep the bulge aligned
with the earth. Therefore, if the moon initially had a faster rotation period
than orbital period the torque would slow the rotation until the two periods
matched, while if the rotation started out slower than the orbital period,
the torque would act to speed the rotation until the periods matched. This
effect, where the rotation and orbital period of a body match due to the tides
and torques produced by the body they orbit is known as a tidal lock, and
occurs many places within the solar system.

Impact Craters
Besides the maria and highlands, the next most obvious surface feature on
the moon are lunar craters. Craters are formed by the impact of meteorites
with the lunar surface. A typical meteoroid will be traveling at speeds from a
few to a few tens of kilometers per second when they impact, so they have a
large amount of kinetic energy when they strike. The collision drives seismic
shock waves down into the moon, and can melt a significant amount of the
surface around the impact site. In addition, a large amount of debris will be
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blasted outward from the impact site, forming an ejecta blanket around the
crater.
One use of craters in studying planetary surfaces is that their surface
density (i.e. number of craters per square kilometer) can be used to determine
relative ages of different regions on that body.

Relative vs. Absolute Age

A relative age scale is one where you can place things in the correct sequence
of age, but are not able to assign exact ages (i.e. you can say that A is older
than B, but can’t say what the age of either A and B are.) An absolute
age scale is one that allows you to attach exact ages (e.g. A is 74 years old,
while B is 36.) Crater surface densities allow us to get relative ages; when
comparing two regions, that with the higher crater density will be older.
Crater densities don’t allow us to determine absolute ages by themselves,
because we don’t know how the rate that craters are produced has changed
throughout the history of the solar system. In order to get absolute ages, we
must instead use radioactive decay dating of rocks.

Ages of Lunar Surface Features

Using samples returned by the Apollo missions, the lunar highlands date
from 4.2-4.4 byrs, while the mare regions date from 3.2-3.9 byrs ago. The
two important points to be noted here are that:

1. Though younger than the highlands, the mare are still as old as the
oldest geologic features on the earth, indicating that geologic activity
ceased on the moon long ago.

2. The much lower density of craters on the mare than the highlands
indicates that the rate of cratering must have been extremely high
initially, but by 3.9 byrs ago must have dropped significantly. In fact,
the rate from 3.9 byrs ago until today has not changed much.

Volcanic Features
The major volcanic features on the surface of the moon are somewhat dif-
ferent than those on the earth. The major volcanic feature on the moon are
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the Maria, which are fissure eruptions that created extremely large flows of
very low viscosity lava.
Other volcanic features observable on the surface of the moon include:

• Sinuous Rilles Sinuous rilles are channels observed in the maria. The
current best guess is that they represent old lava tubes where the roof
of the tube has collapsed.

• Cinder Cones There are a few cinder cones observed on the lunar
surface. Like on the earth, they are small in size.

Note that the majority of the volcanic features indicate very low viscosity
lavas, suggesting that the rocks on the moon are low in silica content, and
thus similar to the oceanic crust or mantle on the earth. The samples of
maria brought back by Apollo astronauts, along with the crater densities on
the maria suggest that all volcanic activity on the lunar surface stopped over
3 billion years ago.

Tectonic Features
Unlike the earth, the moon has no large scale tectonic features akin to plate
boundaries. All the tectonic features that are observed are small scale fea-
tures, and the signs are that tectonic activity stopped 2-3 byrs ago. Some of
the observed tectonic features are:

• Linear Rilles Linear structures a few hundred kilometers long, they

appear to be places where the crust has pulled apart. Possible mecha-
nisms that caused them to form are:

– Expansion during cooling of the moon.

– Local stress due to the added mass on the surface by mare flows.
– Fracturing caused by large nearby impacts.

• Wrinkle Ridges Normally found in the maria. Possibly formed by

surface adjustment due to the mass of the over-lying lava flow.
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Internal Structure
• The average (i.e. compressed) density of the moon is 3.3 g/cc, and
uncompressed density is 3.2 g/cc. This suggests that the moon has a
much lower proportion of iron than the earth does.

• Seismographs left by some of the Apollo missions show that the moon
suffers relatively few moon-quakes, that are much weaker than typical
earthquakes. In addition, the epicenters of the moon-quakes are deep
in the interior of the moon.

• The moon has no global magnetic field.

Based on this evidence, the best current model for the interior of the
moon is:

• Crust: Varies from 50-150 km thick, and is thinner on the Earth facing
side, which probably explains the fact that most maria are found there.
This difference in thickness from near to far side is most likely due to
the tides produced by the earth.

• Mantle: appears to be rigid, and about 1000 km thick. Notice that

unlike the earth, the lithosphere comprises both the crust and the man-
tle.

• Asthenosphere: Has a thickness of a few 100 km, and lies below the
mantle, deep in the interior of the moon, as inferred from the epicenters
of moon quakes.

• Core: Most planetary scientists expect that the moon has a small iron
core, possibly a few 100 km in radius. The core is probably solid.

Theories of Formation for the Moon

Any acceptable theory of the formation of the moon must at the least be
able to explain the following facts about the moon:

1. The difference in iron content between the earth and the moon.

2. The composition of the lunar surface rocks seems similar to the com-
position of the rocks in Earth’s mantle.
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3. The ratios of different isotopes of oxygen and other elements is the

same in lunar and earth rocks, suggesting that they formed from the
same “batch” of material.

4. The overall lack of volatile elements such as water on the moon.

5. The combined angular momentum of Earth/Moon system is very large

compared to the other terrestrial planets.

Over time, four popular models for the formation of the moon have been
proposed.

• Fission The earth and Moon formed as a single object, but later
split into two unequal sized objects due to the rapid rotation of the
parent body. This model can explain the mantle-like composition,
iron deficiency, and isotope ratios, but not the lack of volatiles. This
model requires–but does not explain–the large angular momentum of
the Earth/Moon system, but it predicts that the Moon should orbit
the earth above the equator, while instead the Moon’s orbit is inclined
by about 5◦ to the equator.

• Co-accretion The earth and the moon formed as a “twin planet”.

This model can explain the isotope ratios, but not the other items.

• Capture The earth and the moon formed at different places in the
solar system, and the moon was later captured by the earth. This
model can’t explain the isotope ratios.

• Collision Early in Earth’s history, it was struck by a roughly Mars

sized body, knocking free the material that later coalesced to become
the moon. This model explains the isotope ratios (since the material
from both bodies comes from the same source), mantle-like composi-
tion of the surface (computer simulations of such a collision show that
most of material that ends up forming the moon started out in the
mantle of the precollision Earth plus colliding body), iron deficiency
(the simulations indicate that the collision wasn’t able to dredge out
much of the core, so the earth retains most of the iron while the moon
gets little), lack of volatiles (vaporized during collision, so none incor-
porated in moon), and large angular momentum, most of which comes
from the orbital angular momentum of the Mars size impactor. The
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collision model is currently the most popular theory of lunar formation,

because it can explain all of the known features of the Earth-Moon sys-
tem.

History of Moon
• Formation (4.6-4.5 byrs ago) The material that will form the moon is
knocked free from the earth by the collision of a Mars sized body, and
coalesces in orbit. The lunar crust forms.

• Heavy Bombardment (3.8-4.5 byrs ago) Lunar highlands heavily

cratered during this time.

• Mare Flooding (3.9-3.2 byrs ago) Most of the volcanic activity on

the moon seemed to happen during this time.

• Slow cratering (3.2 byrs-present) No significant geological activity,

probably due to the rapid cooling of the lunar interior due to the moon’s
small size.
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6.3 Mercury
We know relatively little about the planet Mercury. About 50% of its sur-
face has been mapped by Mariner 10, revealing a heavily cratered surface,
not dissimilar in appearance to the surface of the Moon, although with a
somewhat lower crater density. Possible explanations for this lower crater
density include a re-melting of the surface early in Mercury’s history, an in-
tense period of early volcanism that obscured craters, or major impacts that
removed signs of early craters.

Mercury’s Rotation
Early on, astronomers expected that Mercury would rotate once for every
revolution around the sun, due to tidal locking with the sun. It turns out
though that Mercury rotates 3 times for every 2 revolutions. This is because
Mercury has a somewhat eccentric orbit (e ≈ 0.2) which means that its
orbital speed at closest approach to the sun (when tidal forces are by far
the strongest) is the same as it would be for a circular orbit with period 2/3
times that of Mercury.

Internal Structure
The average (i.e. compressed) density of Mercury is 5.4 g/cc, and uncom-
pressed density is 5.2 g/cc, suggesting that Mercury must have a fairly large
iron core. Because of Mercury’s small size, it was expected that Mercury’s
core should be solid. This, together with its slow rotation suggested that
Mercury should have no magnetic field, however Mariner 10 discovered a
global magnetic field approximately 1% as strong as that of the earth! Per-
haps Mercury’s core is partially molten today, or some form of permanent
magnetism is active in its solid core.
From the above observations, we infer that the internal structure of Mer-
cury is:

• Crust + Mantle Only 500-600 km thick. Little is known about the

relative thickness of the crust and mantle.

• Core ∼ 3600 km in radius.

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Volcanism
Relatively few volcanic features were visible in the Mariner 10 images. The
most significant features are known as smooth plains, areas that appear sim-
ilar to Lunar maria.

Tectonic Features
The major tectonic feature on Mercury are the scarps; cliff-like structures
that are a kilometer or more high, and run 100’s of kilometers along the sur-
face, generally in a north-south direction. Possible mechanisms that formed
the scarps include:

• Tidal stresses due to the nearness of Mercury to the sun and the ec-
centricity of its orbit.

• Stresses due to the contraction of the planet as it cooled (the currently

popular hypothesis.)

The Caloris Basin

The Caloris Basin is a large impact structure (approximately 1300 km across,
only about half of the basin is in the area Mariner 10 imaged). On the
opposite side of the planet from the basin is an area of “Chaotic Terrain”,
presumably formed by the focusing of shock-waves produced when the Caloris
Basin was formed.

History
Note that relative and not absolute ages are used here. For everything in
the solar system other than the earth and the moon, we don’t have enough
information to establish an absolute scale.

• Accretion and Differentiation It may be that at the end of this

period, heat released during the formation of Mercury’s core re-melted
the surface.

• Heavy Bombardment

• Caloris Basin Formed

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• Smooth Plains Formed

• Light Cratering Like the moon, we believe that all major geological
activity on Mercury ceased long ago.
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6.4 Venus
Venus may be loosely thought of as “Earth’s Twin”, in that it is closest to
Earth among the other planets in the solar system in its size and distance
from the sun. The most obvious feature of Venus observed from afar is that
it has a thick, cloud dominated atmosphere. Information about its surface
must thus be obtained through either radar mapping or landing probes upon
its surface.
Venus has relatively few impact craters on its surface. Two factors prob-
ably contribute to this. First, the thick atmosphere keeps smaller meteoroids
from reaching the surface. Second, we expect that Venus is geologically ac-
tive today (remember the size part of the earth’s twin business?) and so is
constantly removing older craters through various geological processes. One
curious fact about the crater density on Venus is that it is very uniform over
the entire surface, suggesting that a global event occurred about 500 million
years ago that removed craters over the entire surface. Suggestions for what
that event might have been include a period of strong global volcanism, or a
re-melting of the entire surface of the planet due to a large internal release
of heat.

The Rotation of Venus

One curious feature of Venus is that it rotates in a retrograde sense, with
a period of 243.01 days. It isn’t clear what gives rise to this; it is possible
that it is a tidal lock with the earth, although the period isn’t exactly correct
(243.16 days would be.) The most popular (although difficult to corroborate)
theory is that this may be due to a giant impact sometime early in Venus’
history.

Atmosphere
The atmosphere of Venus is 50 times as dense as Earth’s, with a pressure
at the surface of about 90 atmospheres. It is composed largely of carbon
dioxide (96%) and nitrogen (3.5%), with traces of water, sulfuric acid, hy-
drochloric acid, and hydrofluoric acid. The clouds that enshroud the planet
are composed largely of small particles of sulfur and droplets of sulfuric acid.
High atmospheric pressures greatly enhance the effectiveness of carbon
dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Because of this fact, Venus exhibits an extremely
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strong green house effect. In fact, the average surface temperature on Venus
is higher than any other planet in the solar system, even Mercury.

Geology
What we know about the surface of Venus comes from the surface maps
created from radar measurements by the US Magellan probe, and from a few
Soviet probes that actually landed on the surface. The picture they give us
of the surface is:

• 60% of the surface is rolling plains, with elevation changes less than
500 meters.

• 24% is highlands, with elevations about 4.5 km above that of the rolling
plains.

• An amazing 16% of the surface is covered with large shield volcanoes.

Tectonic Features
Given its other similarities to the earth, we might expect Venus to have large
scale plate tectonics similar to those on Earth. However, no evidence of
large scale rifts can be found on the surface, although there are some folded
mountain belts. The speculation is that the high surface temperature causes
the crust of Venus to be softer and less rigid than that of Earth, so that it
doesn’t form the same type of plate system as the earth does.

Volcanic Features
As noted earlier, the most impressive volcanic features on the surface of
Venus are the many large shield volcanoes. It is guessed that at least some
of these are active, although we have no direct evidence of this.
Another volcanic feature are the Coronae, which are large circular bulges
surrounded by fracture systems. It is speculated that these are due to up-
welling over hot spots in Venus’ mantle, that lift and fracture the crust.
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Internal Structure
Not much is known about the internal structure of Venus. It’s size and density
are similar to that of the earth–compressed density of 5.24, uncompressed
density of 4.2–suggesting a significant iron core. Venus has no global magnetic
field, probably due to its slow rotation.

History
Other than it appears that there was a global resurfacing of the planet about
500 million years ago, we do not currently know enough about Venus to say
anything meaningful about its history.
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6.5 Mars
Mars may also be loosely thought of as “Earth’s twin”, although for different
reasons than Venus. Mars has a ∼ 25 solar hour day and a ∼ 25◦ axial tilt,
both close to the values for Earth. In addition, the surface conditions on
Mars are the closest to those on Earth of any solar system body (although
the conditions aren’t that close, as you will see!) The red or orange color of
Mars is due to Iron Oxides in its soil. On occasion the surface will experience
large dust storms, sometimes obscuring the entire surface of the planet for
weeks at a time.
One interesting feature of Mars that we don’t currently understand is
the fact that the two hemispheres of the planet are considerably different in
their properties. The elevation of the southern hemisphere is roughly 4 km
higher than in the northern hemisphere, and the crater density is significantly
higher in the south than the north. A large scarp (i.e. cliff) divides the
two hemispheres. It has been variously suggested that perhaps a global
flooding event or large impact may have created the asymmetry, but these
are currently little more than speculations.

Atmosphere
The Martian atmosphere is composed largely of carbon dioxide (95%), with
a bit of nitrogen (3%). The final 2% of the atmosphere is composed of Argon
and other trace gases. The density of the atmosphere at the surface of Mars
is only about ∼ 1% that on Earth. Although its atmosphere is composed
largely of carbon dioxide, Mars does not exhibit a significant greenhouse
effect because of the very low density of its atmosphere.

Internal Structure
Both of the Viking landers in the 1970’s carried seismographs, however one
of them did not work. We must therefore rely on our other techniques to tell
us about the interior of Mars.

• The average density of Mars is 3.9 g/cm3 . Because of the planets

relatively low mass, the uncompressed density of Mars is about 3.8
g/cm3 , somewhere between that of the earth and the Moon.
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• Mars currently has no global magnetic field. Mars Global Surveyor

has detected local fields, which show a pattern of stripes of reversed
polarity, similar to that at divergent plate boundaries on the earth.

From this rather meager evidence, the inferred internal structure of Mars
is:

• Lithosphere (crust + mantle) ∼ 2000 km thick.

• Iron Core ∼ 1500 km in radius.

Tectonics
There are no signs of large scale plate tectonics on the surface of Mars today,
although the “magnetic striping” suggests that there might have been some in
Mars’ past. There are many examples of local tectonics, the most impressive
of which are associated with the the Tharsis bulge. Chief among these is
the Valles Marineris, a 5000 km long canyon system that radiates away from
the bulge. The Valles was not formed by erosive processes, as are many
large canyons on the earth such as the Grand Canyon, but instead is due to
fracturing of the crust by the bulge.

Volcanism
Besides creating the Valles Marineris, the Tharsis bulge is also the site of
several large shield volcanoes, the largest of which, Olympus Mons, is ∼
27 km (19 miles) high. The immense size of Olympus Mons and the other
shield volcanoes on Mars is probably due to 2 factors:

1. The area of the crust over the bulge has stayed relatively motionless
over the upwelling in Mars’ mantle that created the bulge, so that the
volcanoes are the result of a number of eruptions over a long period of
time.

2. The relatively low acceleration of gravity on the Martian surface allows

larger volcanoes to be formed than would be possible on the earth or
Venus.

In addition to the shield volcanoes, Mars also shows examples of volcanic

plains, probably similar to lunar maria, but on a smaller scale.
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Evidence for Water

One of the most evocative questions about Mars is whether Mars had liquid
water on its surface in the past, and if so, how much water there was and
where that water might be today. Evidence for liquid water in the past on
Mars includes:

• “Teardrop”craters, presumably formed by the flow of large amounts of

water around the craters.

• “Splat” craters, whose ejecta look similar to a mud-flow on Earth,

suggesting that the impact melted subsurface ice, which mixed with
the Martian soil to form the ejecta.

• Runoff channels, similar to those created by rainfall on Earth. Unlike

the channels on the earth, however, the systems of channels are much
more widely spaced. This suggests that if they were formed by rainfall
that areas where rain did fall were fairly localized. Another possibility
is that the channels were formed not by rainfall, but instead by the
melting of localized areas of surface water.

• Outflow channels, similar to channels created by large, catastrophic

floods on the earth.

Polar Caps
The polar caps on Mars are also places that may harbor water ice. The
caps actually grow and shrink with the Martian seasons. The seasonal caps
are believed to be carbon dioxide ice (i.e. dry ice), that freezes out of the
atmosphere during the winter, and sublimates back into the atmosphere in
the summer. The residual caps that are left during the summer are different
in the southern and northern hemisphere. In the south the residual cap
is approximately 350 km across and stays at the sublimation temperature
of carbon dioxide ice, suggesting that this cap has significant amounts of
carbon dioxide, although large amounts of water ice cannot be ruled out.
In the northern hemisphere, the residual cap is about 1000 km across, and
reaches temperatures well above the sublimation point for carbon dioxide,
suggesting that the cap is largely composed of water ice.
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Where’s the Water Now?

At least some of the evidence above suggests large amounts of liquid water
in the past. If the inferences are correct, the question then becomes, where is
this water today? The amount in the present day polar caps and atmosphere
isn’t nearly enough. Some possibilities include:

• The water is locked up in a layer of permafrost. Mars Odyssey has

detected what appear to be large deposits of sub-surface ice. The in-
struments cannot probe very deeply, so we are currently unsure how
thick these deposits might be.

• Lost into space. Mars low surface gravity means that it has difficulty
holding onto light atmospheric gases, so if the water ended up as water
vapor in the air, it could have been lost to space.

• It may simply be that the estimates of the amount of water in the past
are too high.
Chapter 7

The Gas Giant Planets and

Their Ring Systems

The Gas Giant Planets

The predominant feature of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune is their
extensive atmospheres, which are composed largely of hydrogen and he-
lium. The gas giant planets are sometimes also referred to as the Jovian
(i.e. Jupiter-like) planets.

Jupiter
The basic properties of Jupiter are:
• Mass 318 times the earth (1/1000th that of Sun)
• Diameter 11 times the earth
• Density 1.33 grams/cc
• Rotation period 9.9 hours

Atmosphere
The atmosphere of Jupiter is composed 99.9% of hydrogen and helium, with
75% hydrogen and 25% helium present by mass. There are two obvious
features in the atmosphere; the banded structure (known as belts and zones),
and the great red spot.

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• Belts and Zones There is strong convection in the outer atmosphere of

Jupiter. This, combined with the rapid rotation of the planet produce
the banded structures observed in Jupiter’s atmosphere. The Belts
(darker colored bands) are areas where the atmosphere is descending,
while the Zones (lighter colored bands) are places where the atmosphere
is rising. The Belts are at somewhat higher temperatures than the
Zones.

• The Great Red Spot Is a large rotating disturbance that has per-
sisted for at least 300 years. Its direction of rotation shows that the
spot is a high pressure system (remember the Coriolis effect?) A sec-
ond, smaller red spot has formed recently, out of the merger of two
somewhat smaller disturbances known as white ovals.

Interior
Compared to terrestrial planets, the interiors of the gas giants are more dif-
ficult to get information about (since the fact that any solid surface lies deep
within the planet makes seismographs impractical.) Extracting structure in-
formation from a gas giant’s density is also more difficult, since gases are
highly compressible ,and if compressed sufficiently can change state from a
gas to a liquid. Some information about the distribution of mass in the in-
terior of the planet can be gained by analyzing the trajectories of spacecraft
orbiting in Jupiter’s gravitational field. In order to use this data to gain
information about the interior of the planet, calculations of the behavior of
the gases in the planets atmosphere as they respond to the temperature and
pressure as we work our way into the interior of the planet are necessary.
Observations of the magnetic fields of the planets also give useful informa-
tion. Jupiter has a fairly strong magnetic field, suggesting that it must have
a fairly large conducting and convective core.

• Atmosphere The outer parts of Jupiter are gaseous. Calculations

suggest that the atmosphere stays gaseous well below the layers we can
directly observe.

• Liquid Hydrogen The pressure increases as we move inward into

Jupiter. Eventually, the pressure becomes high enough that the hydro-
gen goes from being a gas to a liquid. The change from gas to liquid is
not abrupt, but instead takes place slowly as you move inward.
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• Liquid Metallic Hydrogen When liquid hydrogen gets to high enough

pressures, it becomes a good conductor of electricity. Calculations show
that the pressures are high enough that a fairly extensive region in
Jupiter’s interior is in this state. The liquid metallic hydrogen, along
with the rapid rotation of the planet account for Jupiter’s strong mag-
netic field.

• Rocky Core The structure calculations indicate that there must be a

solid core to Jupiter (about 15 times mass of the earth or so.)

Jupiter’s Internal Heat Source

Jupiter radiates roughly twice as much electromagnetic radiation as it ab-
sorbs from the Sun, indicating there must be a substantial interior heat source
in the planet. In Jupiter’s case, the source is probably residual heat from its
formation. Jupiter formed from the gravitational collapse of a portion of the
gas cloud that collapsed to form the solar system. Recall that objects that
fall in a gravitational field will convert gravitational potential energy to ki-
netic energy; in the case of Jupiter, gas that comes far from the center of the
collapsing cloud will initially have large amounts of gravitational potential
energy. When the collapse occurs, this gas will accelerate inward, and by the
time it reaches a collapsed state, will have a large kinetic energy. When the
density in the forming planet is sufficiently high, the collapse will be halted,
during which the kinetic energy will be converted to heat.
Soon after its collapse, Jupiter was very hot, and since then has slowly
cooled by radiating this heat. It is this reservoir of heat from its formation
that produces the excess radiation we observe today.

Saturn
The basic properties of Saturn are:

• Mass 95 times Earth’s mass

• Diameter 9.5 times Earth’s diameter

• Density 0.69 grams/cc (less than water)!

• Rotation period 10.7 hours

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Atmosphere
Like Jupiter, the atmosphere of Saturn is composed 99.9% of hydrogen and
helium. Unlike Jupiter, however, there is about 7 times as much hydrogen
as helium by mass. This is most likely due to condensation of liquid he-
lium in the lower levels of the planet. Saturn has a lower temperature than
Jupiter, so it possible for helium–which condenses at a lower temperature
than hydrogen–to condense in Saturn but not in Jupiter.. Unlike Jupiter,
the banding structure in Saturn’s atmosphere is much weaker (again, due
to Saturn’s lower temperature), and there are no signs of strong, persistent
cloud features akin to Jupiter’s great red spot.

Interior
Because of its lower mass, the interior of Saturn suffers less compression than
that of Jupiter. Saturn has a magnetic field, but it is much less strong than
that of Jupiter.

• Atmosphere

• Liquid Hydrogen

• Liquid Metallic Hydrogen Because of Saturn’s lower mass, it has a

much less extensive zone of liquid metallic hydrogen than Jupiter does.

• Core Calculations indicate a core similar to that of Jupiter, somewhere

in the range of 10-15 Earth masses.

Saturn’s Internal Heat Source

Saturn radiates approximately 3 times as much electromagnetic radiation as
it absorbs from the Sun. Because it is only 1/3 the mass of Jupiter, Saturn re-
leased significantly less gravitational potential energy during its collapse than
Jupiter did, so its internal heat today must come from a different source than
Jupiter’s. The answer lies in the precipitation of liquid helium in Saturn’s in-
terior. Going from a gas to a liquid releases a significant amount of heat (just
as the reverse process of converting a liquid to a gas requires a significant
input of heat.) This, along with the loss of gravitational potential energy of
the helium rain falls inward is the source of Saturn’s internal excess of heat.
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Uranus and Neptune

Compared to Jupiter and Saturn, relatively little is known about Uranus and
Neptune. The Basic properties of Uranus are:

• Diameter 4.1 times that of Earth

• Mass 14 times Earth

• Density 1.3 grams/cc

• Rotation axis is approximately parallel to the plane of the planets orbit.

The basic properties of Neptune are:

• Diameter 3.9 times that of Earth

• Mass 17 times Earth

• Density 1.5 grams/cc

• Rotation axis at an angle approximately 30◦ to plane of orbit

The Discovery of Uranus

In 1781, an English musician and amateur astronomer named William Her-
schel was at work using a small telescope to compile a catalog of stars. Her-
schel noted one star that appeared fuzzy and not point like (as stars typ-
ically do.) Observations on subsequent nights showed that the fuzzy star
moved with respect to the other stars, and was in fact a planet orbiting the
sun. Herschel originally named the planet “Georgium Sidus” (i.e. “George’s
Star”) after King George III of Great Britain. Fortunately, this name didn’t
stick, and the planet was given the name Uranus (who was Saturn’s father
in Roman mythology.)

The Discovery of Neptune

With repeated observations of Uranus, it became possible to quite accurately
determine its orbit, and predict its future positions using Kepler’s laws. By
1830 it was known that there were small but significant deviations in Uranus’
actual position compared to its calculated position. Several scientists real-
ized that these deviations could be due to the gravitational pull of another
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undiscovered planet further out in the solar system. Two people successfully
undertook the task of calculating the position of this planet based upon the
observed deviations of Uranus’ orbit; Englishman John Adams, and French-
man Urbain Leverrier. Adams completed his computations first, but had
difficulty getting English astronomers to search for the planet. When they
did finally search, they lacked good star charts of that region of the sky and
were unable to locate the planet. On the other hand, Leverrier sent the re-
sults of his calculations to a German astronomer, who did have good charts;
with these charts he quickly identified the planet Neptune, at very near the
position predicted by both Adams and Leverrier.

Atmospheres
Like Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune and Uranus have atmospheres that are
99.9% Hydrogen and Helium.

Interiors
Because of their relatively low masses, calculations of the interior structure of
Uranus and Neptune indicate that there should be no zone of liquid metal-
lic hydrogen, but that there should still be substantial solid cores to the
planets (around 10 times the mass of the earth or so.) Quite surprisingly
given this expected lack of liquid metallic hydrogen, both planets do have
global magnetic fields. Furthermore, the field axes in both planets are tipped
substantially with respect to their rotation axes, and the center of the field
axes are substantially offset with respect to the centers of the planets. All
of this taken together suggests that a mechanism different from that produc-
ing Jupiter and Saturn’s fields–one that is not currently well understood–
generates the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune..

Internal Heat Sources in Uranus and Neptune

Uranus radiates approximately the same amount of energy as it receives from
the sun. On the other hand, Neptune radiates about twice as much as it re-
ceives. The reason for this difference is currently not well understood. People
have suggested everything from differences in the insulation of the two plan-
ets interiors, to heating due to radioactive decay, to gravitational potential
energy, to a giant impact (so you know that they have to be desperate!) The
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number of unexpected features of these two planets suggests we have much

to learn about them!

Ring Systems
Each of the gas giant planets has a system of rings, but the character of the
rings varies significantly from planet to planet.

Saturn’s Rings
The rings of Saturn are very extensive, extending from 1.2 to 2.3 times the
radius of Saturn. Although they extend very far radially, the rings are very
thin, being no more than about 20 meters (60 feet) in thickness! The rings
appear bright because of the reflection of sunlight by icy and/or ice covered
particles in the rings. The particles making up the rings range in size from
grains of sand to house size. Data from the Voyager probes in the early
1980’s showed that the actual structure of the rings on the small scale is very
complicated, with many small ringlets, gaps, and braided and kinky rings.

Jupiter’s Rings
The rings of Jupiter were discovered by the Voyager probes. Jupiter has a
primary ring that orbits from about 1.5 to 1.8 Jupiter radii. The ring is
made up of darkly colored particles no larger than grains of dust. Because
of this, Jupiter’s ring appears brighter from the far side of the planet from
the sun than the near side, due to forward scattering of the sunlight by the
small grains.

Rings of Uranus
The rings of Uranus where discovered in 1977 by astronomers observing the
occultation of a bright star by Uranus. They found that before and after the
occultation there where brief dips in the brightness of the star, due to the
star passing behind the rings. the originally discovered ring system consists
of 12 rings, which are all very narrow. The particles in the rings are dark,
and all are above a few centimeters in size.
New observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered 2
new rings, orbiting at roughly twice the radius of the rings that were first
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discovered. These rings seem to be composed of very small dust particles,

unlike the original ring system.

Rings of Neptune
After the discovery of the rings of Uranus, people also tried to search for rings
around Neptune using the occultation technique. Sometimes no occultations
were seen, while at other times a dip in brightness was seen on one side
of the planet but not the other, suggesting that if Neptune did have a ring
system, that the rings were only partial arcs, or at least that the material was
distributed in a clumpy way along the rings. Voyager 2 showed that there are
4 rings of Neptune, 3 of which are too insubstantial to have been detected
by occultation, and that the earlier occultation results where the result of
clumpy regions in the fourth ring. The rings are much brighter in forward
scattered than back scattered light, indicating that the rings are made up of
small particles.

Ring Dynamics
In order to understand how the structures seen in different planetary rings
arise, their dynamics must be analyzed using Newton’s laws of motion and
gravity. In fact, there are certain features in the ring systems that we don’t
completely understand, because no one has yet been smart enough to com-
pletely write down and solve the correct equations describing some features.
Several ideas that are important for shaping the rings that we do understand
well are:

• The Roche Limit Imagine being able to take a large moon of the
outer planets, and move it around so that it is orbiting at different
distances from the planet. The closer you put the moon to the planet,
the higher the tidal stresses are on the moon. In fact, there is a distance
within which the stresses are so strong that the moon would be torn
apart. This distance is known as the Roche Limit. Almost all the
planetary rings lie within this limit, suggesting that a major source
of ring material may be the remnants of planetary satellites that got
within the Roche limit on their orbits, or possibly material that was
never able to accrete itself into a larger satellite, due to being within
the Roche limit.
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• Resonances Imagine pushing someone on a swing. The most effective

way to get them to swing higher is to give them a push in the same
direction once every period of the swing. This is an example of a
resonance; you are matching the period (or frequency) of the applied
force to the natural period (or frequency) of the body. The same thing
can happen to any orbiting object. If a force is applied that matches
the period (or if the periods are whole multiples of one another), the
orbit will eventually be changed by the resonance. Some of the gaps in
planetary rings are caused by just this mechanism. For example, the
Cassini division in Saturn’s rings is caused by a 2 to 1 resonance with
the moon Mimas. Resonances can also produce sharp outer edges in a
ring. For example, the sharp outer edge edge of the A ring of Saturn
is due to a 6 to 7 resonance with two of Saturn’s moons, Janus and
Epimetheus.

• Shepherd Moons Some narrow rings can be formed by the actions of

a pair of small moons, orbiting slightly inside and outside the position
of the ring. The combined action of these satellites will be to “herd”
the ring particles into a narrow ring, due to the gravitational effects of
the two moons.

• Embedded Satellites The gravitational action of a small satellite em-

bedded with in a ring can act to clear gaps, and even more surprisingly
if the conditions are right, create a narrow ring.
Chapter 8

The Large Moons of the Gas

Giants

The Large Satellites of Jupiter

The four large satellites of Jupiter, ordered from furthest to nearest to Jupiter
are Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io. It was these 4 satellites that Galileo
saw through his telescope, so they are sometimes referred to as the Galilean
satellites.

Callisto
The basic properties of Callisto are:

• A diameter 1.3 times that of Earth’s Moon.

• A density of 1.8 g/cc (remember, the Moon is 3.3 g/cc, liquid water is
1 g/cc.)

The density of Callisto suggests that there are roughly equal amounts of
water ice and rock making up Callisto. The surface of Callisto is about as
heavily cratered as the lunar highlands, suggesting that the surfaces of the
Moon and Callisto are of similar age. Callisto lacks large craters and impact
basins, probably because its icy surface is not rigid enough to retain such
features.

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Ganymede
The basic properties of Ganymede are:

• A diameter 1.5 times that of the Moon.

• A density of 1.9 g/cc.

• Ganymede has a global magnetic field, which was detected by the

Galileo probe.

The similarity of Ganymede’s density to that of Callisto suggests a sim-

ilar mix of materials. Half of Ganymede’s surface is as heavily cratered as
Callisto’s, while the other half is somewhat less heavily cratered, although
the inferred ages in the least heavily cratered areas are still billions of years
old. The younger areas show a system of parallel grooves, suggesting an early
era of depression and uplift for some areas of Ganymede’s surface.

Europa
The basic properties of Europa are:

• A diameter 0.9 times that of the Moon.

• A density of 3.0 g/cc.

The surface of Europa is coated with ice, but its relatively high density
suggests that it is composed largely of rocky material. The surface of Europa
has a crater density about the same as the surface of Venus, suggesting a
relatively young age. Images of “ice rafts” on the surface of Europa by the
Galileo probe, along with measurements of how the magnetic field of Jupiter
is modified in the area of Europa, suggest that a salty, liquid ocean underlies
the solid ice on Europa’s surface.

Io
The basic properties of Io are:

• A diameter of 1.1 times the Moon.

• A density of 3.3 g/cc.

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The high density of Io suggests that there is little or no ice on Io. There
are no craters observable on its surface, suggesting that Io actually resurfaces
itself at a rate higher than the earth does! This resurfacing is due to extensive
volcanic activity on Io. In fact, a number of active volcanoes have been
observed on the surface of Io.
The volcanic activity of Io came as a great surprise to planetary scientists,
because other bodies the size of Io (such as Earth’s moon) ended their activity
long ago, due to the speed at which their interiors cooled. In Io’s case, its
interior maintains a high amount of heat due to tidal squeezing by Jupiter.

The Moons of Saturn

Titan
The basic properties of Titan are:

• A diameter of 1.5 times that of the Moon.

• A density of 1.9 g/cc.

Titan’s density implies a mixture of ice and rock, similar to Callisto and
Ganymede. Titan has a substantial atmosphere, composed largely of nitro-
gen, with small percentages of argon and methane. Up until recently, little
was known about the surface of Titan, because it is obscured by haze in its
atmosphere. Images of a small portion of Titan’s surface have been returned
by the Huygen’s probe in late 2004 as it descended through Titan’s atmo-
sphere. These images showed a region of ridged terrain, cut by river channels.
These channels were not produced by running water (since the surface tem-
perature of Titan is well below the freezing point of water), but instead are
most likely caused by liquid ethane and methane. Radar mapping by Cassini
has revealed large regions dominated by sand dunes.
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Medium Sized Moons

Moon Diameter (Moon=1) Density (g/cm3 )
Mimas 0.11 1.2
Enceladus 0.14 1.2
Tethys 0.30 1.3
Dione 0.32 1.4
Rhea 0.44 1.3
Iapetus 0.41 1.2

Moons of Uranus
Uranus has no large satellites comparable to those of Jupiter and Saturn. It
does have 5 medium sized satellites:
Moon Diameter (Moon=1) Density (g/cm3 )
Miranda 0.14 1.3
Ariel 0.33 1.6
Umbriel 0.34 1.4
Titania 0.46 1.6
Oberon 0.45 1.5
These moons all orbit in the equatorial plane of Uranus, which is essen-
tially perpendicular to Uranus’ orbital plane around the Sun. The only one
of these moons to be imaged up close is Miranda; given its small size it was
expected that it would show a heavily cratered surface. Instead, its surface
shows some of the most bizarre terrain seen on any planet or moon in the
solar system.

Moons of Neptune
Triton
The basic properties of Triton are:

• A diameter of 0.78 times that of the Moon.

• A density of 2.1 g/cc.

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• Is in a retrograde orbit around Neptune.

This last fact about Triton suggests that it did not form along with Neptune
and its other medium sized satellites, but instead must have formed elsewhere
in the solar nebula, and was later captured by Neptune. This suggests that
Triton might well be grouped with Pluto for further study, rather than with
the other moons of the gas giants.
Chapter 9

Minor Solar System Bodies

Besides the larger bodies we have already discussed, the solar system is also
filled with a large number of smaller bodies, including meteroids, asteroids,
comets, as well as the smaller satellites of the planets.. These are of particular
interest because some of them may hold clues to what the early material in
the solar system was like.

Meteoroids, Meteors, and Meteorites

Small pieces of rocky debris in space that have not yet fallen to Earth are
known as meteoroids. The same bodies that fall to Earth but are burned
up in Earth’s atmosphere are known as meteors, while those that survive
to reach the ground are called meteorites. Radioactive dating of meteorites
show that most solidified from 4.4 to 4.5 billion years ago. Meteorites are
found to have a number of distinct compositions:
• Iron Meteorites are almost purely a mixture of Iron and Nickel.
• Stony-Iron Meteorites have some Iron-Nickel material, mixed with
some rocky material.
• Stony Meteorites Can be divided into two categories.
– Primitive Stones, which show little modification since their ini-
tial cooling.
– Differentiated Stones, which show signs of significant re-melting
after their initial cooling.

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The irons, stony-irons, and differentiated stones thus represent material that
underwent major chemical changes after their formation, while the primitive
stones have not. Primitive stones thus represent relatively pristine samples
of the material in the early solar system.

Fractions
The most reliable percentages of the different types of meteorites comes from
meteorites that are found because their fall through the earth’s atmosphere
was actually observed. These meteorites reveal the following percentages:

• Primitive Stones: 87 %

• Differentiated stones: 9 %

• Iron: 3 %

• Stony-Irons: 1 %

The Differentiated Meteorites

As their names imply, the differentiated meteorites appear to have come
from smaller solar system bodies that had differentiated into a core/mantle
structure, and were later fragmented. The iron meteorites thus represent
material from the cores of these bodies; the differentiated stones, which are
similar to basalts in their properties, are from the mantles; and the stony-
irons are from the interface of the core and mantle. Analysis of isotope ratios
in different differentiated meteorites suggests that there are at least several
dozen parent bodies from which the differentiated meteorites come. The
times for these bodies to cool and solidify can be inferred from the crystal
patterns in iron meteorites (in essence, the larger the crystals, the slower the
cooling). These patterns give typical cooling times of a few million years,
suggesting that the original parent bodies were around 100 km in diameter.

Primitive Meteorites
The lack of significant melting since the formation of the primitive mete-
orites suggests that their parent bodies are also relatively small. The least
processed of the primitive meteorites, which represent a few percent of all
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primitive meteorites are the carbonaceous meteorites, so called because

they contain relatively large amounts of carbon (a few percent by weight.)
Carbonaceous meteorites usually contain some water and other volatile com-
pounds, chemically bound up in clays. In addition, many carbonaceous me-
teorite contain complex organic compounds such as amino acids (remember
that organic compounds can be created by non-organic processes, so that
that the presence of organic molecules doesn’t necessarily imply that they
are produced by living organisms.)

Asteroids
Rocky bodies somewhat larger than meteoroids are referred to as asteroids.
Most known asteroids in the solar system orbit the sun in the asteroid belt,
which lays between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The largest known aster-
oid is Ceres, which has a diameter of 0.3 times that of the Moon, although
most asteroids are much smaller. The total mass in asteroid belt asteroids is
only about 1/2000 that of the earth. Asteroids can be classified into different
families, based upon their orbits and compositions. Asteroids appear to be
the most likely parent bodies for meteorites.

Orbits
As already mentioned, most known asteroids orbit in the asteroid belt, but
their distribution in the belt itself is not uniform. In fact, there exist gaps
in the asteroid belt (known as Kirkwood gaps after their discoverer) where
relatively few asteroids orbit. These gaps are created by orbital resonances
with Jupiter, in much the same way as the Cassini division is created in the
rings of Saturn by orbital resonances with the moons of Saturn.
Besides the main belt asteroids, there are two other orbit families of
asteroids worth mentioning; Trojan point asteroids and Earth orbit crossing
asteroids.

• Trojan point asteroids The Trojan points of Jupiter occur at the

two points on Jupiter’s orbit leading and trailing Jupiter by 60◦ . At
the Trojan points, the perturbing effects of Jupiter’s and the Sun’s
gravity essentially cancel, so that small bodies such as asteroids can
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orbit stably there.1

• Near Earth asteroids Also known as Apollo or Aten asteroids, named

after the prototypes of two different classes of Earth crossing asteroids.
These types of asteroids have been all the rage for newspaper reporters
in the past 10 years or so (and we won’t even mention Hollywood...)
Because of the perturbing effects of the gravity of the inner planets,
orbits in the inner solar system for asteroids over the long term aren’t
stable. This means that in the long term there are two possible fates
for such asteroids; the gravitational ejection of the body from the solar
system, or a collision with with one of the inner planets in the solar
system.

Comets
Too many ancient civilizations (remember the Mesopotamians?), comets were
harbingers of doom. In fact, up until the time of Tycho Brahe, it was a
matter of scholarly debate as to whether comets were astronomical objects, or
some sort of disturbance in the earth’s upper atmosphere. Tycho attempted
to measure the distance to a comet by looking for an angular shift in the
comet’s position as seen from different locations on the surface of the earth.
Tycho’s inability to detect any such shift meant that the comet must be at
a considerable distance from the earth, and thus must be a celestial object.

A Comet’s Structure
There are two easily discernible parts to a comet’s structure:

• The Coma The bright, fuzzy head of a comet is known as the coma,
and is made up of dust and gas boiled from the surface of the comet
by the Sun as the comet moves into the inner solar system.

• Tail The tail of a comet is actually two tails:

– The Plasma Tail The bluish, straight tail is made up of ionized

gases from the comet. Because the gas molecules are very light,
1
You can also think of the presence of the Trojan Points in terms of resonances; they
are the 1:1 resonances with Jupiter.
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they are easily blown away from the comet by the solar wind,
forming a straight tail pointing directly away from the Sun.
– The Dust Tail The yellowish tail of the comet is known as the
dust tail, and is made up of (surprise!) small dust grains liberated
from the comet. Because the dust grains are heavier than the
molecules in the plasma tail, the dust tail tends to curve under
the combined affect of the Sun’s gravity and radiation pressure.

The Comet’s Nucleus

The actual solid body that makes up the comet is known as the nucleus,
which is typically somewhere around 5-20 kilometers in size. The nucleus
may be thought of as a “dirty snowball”, being a roughly equal mixture of
small dust grains and different types of ices ( largely water, carbon dioxide,
and carbon monoxide.) At the rate material is lost from a comet as it passes
the Sun, a typical comet contains enough material for a few hundred or at
best few thousand passages through the inner solar system.

Comet Orbits
Based on the structure and periods of their orbits, we can break comets into
two classes.

Short Period Comets

• Have orbital periods < 200 years or so.

• Usually have orbital planes close to that of the planets.

• Orbit the Sun in same direction as the planets.

Notice that the short period plus number of possible orbits before their ma-
terial is used up suggests that a typical short period comet will last for a few
hundred thousand to a few million years. This means that there must be a
reservoir of comets in the outer solar system from which the supply of short
period comets is constantly replenished.
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Long Period Comets

• Have orbital periods in the range 1,000-100,000 years.

• Have orbital planes that are randomly oriented.

• Have orbits that are close to unbound, suggesting that many may es-
cape the Sun’s gravity after one passage through the inner solar system.

This final point suggests a source for long period comets in the outer solar
system, distinct from that supplying the short term comets.

Comet Origins
The two comet reservoirs in the outer solar system are thought to be:

• The Kuiper Belt Calculations show that the reservoir for the short
period comets must:

1. Be a flat structure with its plane aligned with the plane of the
solar system, in order to account for the comets having similar
orbital planes to the planets.
2. Extend from the neighborhood of Pluto, outward.

• The Oort Cloud Analysis of the orbits of long period comets shows
that:

1. Most long period comets originated at distances about 50,000 AU

from the Sun.
2. Because of the random orientation of orbital planes, the reservoir
most be roughly spherical.
Chapter 10

The Outer Solar System

The outer solar system is largely a mystery to us. the existence of comets
suggests that there must be a large number of icy bodies orbiting the Sun
beyond Neptune, but it has only been in the past fifteen years that objects
(other than Pluto) have been detected.

Pluto
Because no spacecraft has ever visited Pluto, we know very little about the
planet. The basic properties of Pluto are:

• Diameter 0.66 that of Moon.

• Density 2.1 grams/cc.

Pluto has a relatively eccentric orbit, and one that is tipped at an angle
of about 17◦ to the ecliptic. In fact, Pluto’s orbit is sufficiently eccentric that
for a portion of its orbit, Pluto is actually closer to the Sun than Neptune.
There is no chance of Pluto colliding with Neptune however, for two reasons.
First, Pluto is in a 3 to 2 orbital resonance with Neptune; in this case the
resonance is such that the two bodies never approach one another. Second,
at the parts of its orbit where Pluto is at the same distance from the sun as
Neptune, the large inclination of Pluto’s orbit insures that it is well above or
below the plane of Neptune’s orbit.
Pluto has a moon, named Charon, that was discovered in 1978, due to
periodic eclipses of the planet by the moon, and vice-versa. Charon has a

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mass approximately 1/6 that of Pluto, which is a large mass for a satellite
relative to the body it is orbiting.

Kuiper Belt Objects

Starting in 1992, significant numbers of Kuiper belt objects in orbits larger
than that of Neptune have been discovered, thanks to very sensitive surveys
that became possible due to the advances in electronic detectors at telescopes.
There seem to be at least three distinct classes of such objects:

1. Classical Kuiper Belt Objects are in orbits that stay sufficiently

far from Neptune that the planet is unable to make significant changes
in their orbits. Curiously, there are very few of these objects in orbits
with semi-major axis larger than 50 AU or so.

2. Scattered Kuiper Belt Objects are on fairly eccentric and inclined

orbits, probably due to weak gravitational interactions with Neptune
over times of billions of years.

3. Plutinos are in orbits that put them in the same 3 to 2 resonance with
Neptune that Pluto is in. (This means that it is probably reasonable
to think of Pluto as simply the largest of this class of objects.)

A few larger objects in the outer solar system are worth mentioning:

• Quaoar (pronounced Kwah-o-wahr) is a classical Kuiper Belt Object

discovered in 2002, that has a diameter approximately half that of
Pluto.

• Sedna was discovered in 2003 and probably has a diameter of between

1/3 and 1/2 that of Pluto. Sedna is in a very eccentric orbit with a
semi-major axis of about 500 AU, and a closest approach to the sun
of 76 AU. It appears that Sedna might be neither a Kuiper Belt or an
Oort Cloud object, but instead lies on an orbit between the two.

• Orcus is a plutino discovered in 2004, which may have a diameter

larger than either Quaoar or Sedna.

• 2003 UB 313 A scattered Kuiper belt object discovered in 2003, it is

essentially the same radius as Pluto. It has a satellite, so eventually, a
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mass will be measured for it. The discovery of this object has added
new fuel to the “is Pluto a planet or not?” controversy.
Chapter 11

The Sun and Its Influence in

the Solar System

In this course, we are primarily interested in the properties of the Sun that
can have significant effects on things elsewhere in the solar system. That is,
we are largely interested in the external properties of the sun. In ph1306, we
instead look more closely at the Sun as a star, and thus its internal properties.
The Sun is the dominant object in the solar system in at least:

• It contains over 99% the solar system’s mass, making it the dominant
gravitational feature in the solar system.

• It produces the majority of the energy in the solar system, meaning that
most energy intensive activities or processes on the earth or elsewhere
in the solar system ultimately rely on the Sun as their energy source.

The basic properties of the Sun are:

• Composed largely of Hydrogen and Helium.

• Rotates once every 25.4 days at the equator (33 days at the poles).

The Sun’s Energy Production

The Sun radiates a tremendous amount of energy from its surface every
second, and has been doing so at roughly the same rate for the past 4.5
billion years. The source of this energy production remained mysterious for

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a very long time; it wasn’t until the discovery of the nature of the atomic
nucleus in the 1920’s and 1930’s that astrophysicists realized the the Sun’s
energy was being produced by the fusion of light nuclei to heavier nuclei in
the core of the Sun.

Nuclear Fusion
The nuclei of all elements are made up of protons and neutrons, where the
number of protons in a particular nucleus determines which element that
nucleus is (e.g. hydrogen contains one proton, helium two protons, and so
on.) Notice this means that there must be processes in nature that can stick
together two nuclei to make a heavier nuclei (fusion), and to split a large
nuclei into smaller nuclei (fission). Depending on the nucleus undergoing the
fusion or fission process, energy may be released or absorbed during these
processes.

Fundamental Forces
When boiled down to its essence, there are only 4 different mechanisms by
which a particle in the universe can act on another. Physicists refer to these
as the fundamental forces in nature:

• Gravity We’ve already talked a bit about gravitation. Any particle

with mass can act by and be acted upon by the gravitational force. 1

• Electromagnetism Any particle with an electric charge can act by

and be acted upon through the electromagnetic force.

• Strong Nuclear This is the force that works between nuclear particles
(i.e. protons and neutrons), and allows them to bind together to form
nuclei.

• Weak Nuclear This force is responsible for certain types of radioactive

decays.
1
Because mass is convertable to energy–and vice-versa–even massless particles such as
photons produce and respond to gravitation. In the current day universe however, the
mass in massive particles greatly exceeds that in massless particles, so we usually neglect
the effect of massless particles.
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These forces can be grouped together based upon the range of distances over
which they act. Gravity and electromagnetism are examples of long range
forces; although the strength of these forces gets weaker the further you
get from the object producing them, they never drop to zero. On the other
hand, the weak and strong nuclear forces are short range forces. They act
over dimensions comparable to that of an atomic nucleus, and over larger
distances quickly drop to zero.

The Proton-Proton Chain

In the core of the Sun, energy is produced through a multi-step process in
which 4 hydrogen nuclei (i.e. 4 protons) are fused to form a single helium
nucleus (which contains 2 protons and 2 neutrons). The mass of the neutron
is slightly larger than that of the proton, so 4 free protons will have slightly
less mass than 2 free protons and 2 free neutrons. Surprisingly then, the
mass of a single helium nucleus is 0.7 % less than that of the 4 protons. This
difference in mass is just the amount of energy it would take to break the
helium nucleus back into free neutrons and protons (this conversion of mass
to energy–or vice-versa–is possible because E = mc2 ), and is referred to as
the binding energy of the nucleus. That 0.7 % of mass is released as energy
in the form of photons during the fusion reactions. This basic process is the
ultimate power source for the Sun.

Energy Transport
Because the core of the Sun is hotter than its outer parts, the energy pro-
duced in the core will naturally flow outward. Remember that nature has 3
mechanisms for this heat flow:

• Conduction, where heat is transferred due to physical contact between

bodies.

• Radiation, where warmer regions emit, and cooler regions absorb the
energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation.2
2
Actually any object with a temperature above absolute zero will emit electromagnetic
radiation; objects at lower temperature emit less than those at higher temperature. This
means that if two regions are at a different temperature, the cooler will emit less than it
absorbs from the warmer, and vice-versa.
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• Convection, the mechanism that occurs when all else fails. Hot ma-
terial rises, and mixes with cooler material, raising its temperature. At
the same time, cooler material sinks and mixes with hotter material at
the level, reducing its temperature.

Observable Layers of Sun

The outer, directly observable parts of the Sun may be divided into three
distinct layers:

• The Photosphere The lowest observable layer, where the great ma-
jority of all the light emitted by the sun emanates from. The photo-
sphere has a temperature of around 5800 K. Two obvious features are
visible in the photosphere: sunspots (which are discussed a bit later)
and granulation. Granulation is a “salt and pepper” appearance to the
photosphere when seen at high resolution, and is caused by the tops of
convective cells, from lower layers in the Sun.

• The Chromosphere The temperature in the photosphere slowly drops

as you move outward in the Sun, but eventually reaches a minimum
and begins to rise again. This temperature minimum is the boundary
between the photosphere and the chromosphere. The chromosphere is
much less dense than the photosphere, and has an average temperature
of about 10,000 K. At high resolution the chromosphere can be seen to
be made up of hundreds of thousands of spicules; small spiky structures
that appear and disappear over times of 10 minutes or so.

• The Corona Above the chromosphere, the temperature of the solar

atmosphere rapidly shoots up to a few million degrees (because the
density is very low, however, the total amount of energy in the gas is
fairly modest), this layer is known as the corona. The corona is visible
during solar eclipses in white light as a hazy halo of light extending from
1 to 3 solar radii above the chromosphere, often showing several spiky
features known as coronal streamers. Because of its high temperature,
the solar corona is also observable from space due to its x-ray emission.
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The Active Sun

The above features of the Sun are sometimes referred to as the “quiet” Sun,
since they are always present. Other solar features appear and disappear over
an eleven year cycle, and collectively are sometimes known as the “active”
Sun.

Sunspots
Sunspots are darker appearing regions in the solar photosphere. Sunspots
come and go, some lasting only days while others can persist for months.
Sunspots aren’t actually dark, but are places in the photosphere where the
temperature is cooler than that in surrounding areas. Sunspots thus emit
somewhat less light than their surroundings and thus appear dark by com-
parison. The locations of sunspots are areas where the magnetic field is
approximately 1000 times stronger than the average field in the photosphere.
The magnetic field in these locations inhibits convection (remember, charged
particles have a hard time crossing magnetic field lines), so that the sunspot
is receiving less heat from below than surrounding areas and is thus cooler.
The average number of sunspots on the surface of the Sun rises and falls
over an 11 year cycle, suggesting that the magnetic field on the Sun is varying
over 11 years also. Actually, at the end of one sunspot cycle, the polarity of
the Sun’s magnetic field ends up the reverse of what it was at the beginning
of the cycle. This means that each 11 year sunspot cycle represents half of a
22 year cycle in the solar magnetic field.

Other Forms of Activity

Besides sunspots, there are a number of other features on the Sun that follow
the magnetic activity cycle.

Prominences
Prominences are hot gas trapped in magnetic field lines that loop up out of
the photosphere, and can easily be several times the diameter of the earth in
size. Some prominences are structures that can last for days or weeks, while
others can erupt rapidly from the solar surface.
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Solar Flares
Solar flares are explosive releases of energy, that can be seen as bright flashes
on the sun, and can last from minutes to hours. Large amounts of electromag-
netic radiation can be given off during flares, at wavelengths from the radio
through the x-ray. Flares are thought to be produced by the local restruc-
turing of the solar magnetic field in the region where the flare is produced.
The released magnetic energy during this process heats gas at the flare site
to millions of degrees, creating the observed electromagnetic radiation.

Coronal Mass Ejections

Continuous observation of the corona in white light from satellites shows that
the corona is constantly ejecting parts of itself, at speeds from a few hundred
to a few thousand kilometers per second. These coronal mass ejections hap-
pen more often around the peak of the magnetic cycle. The fastest coronal
mass ejections drive shocks into the solar wind, which can accelerate large
bursts of energetic particles into the inner solar system. Like solar flares,
coronal mass ejections seem to be a symptom of restructuring of the solar
magnetic field.

Effects of Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections at Earth

Both flares and coronal mass ejections can have significant effects at Earth:

• The x-rays and ultraviolet radiation released during large flares can
ionize Earth’s upper atmosphere, affecting radio communications and
possibly even increasing the chances of thunderstorms.

• The charged particles created by coronal mass ejections, and less fre-
quently by flares can have a number of effects at Earth.

– Aurora’s are caused by fluorescence of atoms and molecules in

Earth’s atmosphere excited by collisions with energetic charged
particles.
– Strong bursts of energetic charged particles have the ability to
knock out the electronics in orbiting satellites. In addition, the
particles can pose a radiation risk for humans in space.
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Effects on Earth’s Climate

One of the difficulties in determining how changes in the earth and its at-
mosphere affect Earth’s climate (for example, how do the observed increases
in carbon dioxide levels affect temperatures?) is taking into account changes
due to other sources, among them small variations in the energy output of
the sun. At least two different mechanisms for changing the solar energy
reaching the earth are known:

• During the late 1600’s, few sunspots were observed on the Sun over 3
solar cycles. This time is known as the Maunder minimum. At the same
time, northern Europe experienced a “Little Ice Age”, during which
cooler temperatures led to shorter growing seasons. In fact, during this
time there were ponds and other bodies of water in northern Europe
that never completely thawed, even in the middle of summer. While
not conclusive by itself, this coincidence of lower sunspot number and
lower temperatures on Earth suggests a possible link between solar
energy output and the solar magnetic cycle.

• During the 1920’s, a Yugoslavian scientist named Milutin Milankovitch

showed that small gravitational perturbations on the earth by Jupiter
would create periodic changes in the orbital parameters of the earth,
over periods of 10’s to 100’s of thousands of years. Milankovitch sug-
gested that the changes in the amount of sunlight being received by
the earth due to these changes might be enough to affect the climate
on the earth.
Chapter 12

Life Elsewhere in the Solar

System

The current wisdom among astro-biologists is, if you want to know where
to look for life elsewhere in the universe, follow the water. This is because
many of the chemical reactions necessary for life as we know it occur only
when the reactants are dissolved in liquid water.

Evidence for Life on Mars

The evidence that Mars had liquid water on its surface in its past suggests
it might have once (and maybe still does) harbors life. The whole question
of life on Mars actually has a somewhat disreputable past. In the early
1900’s for example, Percival Lowell reported with confidence the presence of
an intricate network of canals on Mars; canals built by intelligent beings.
Although these claims received much attention in the popular press at the
time, it turns out the putative canals were actually due to a combination of
the human brains pattern matching abilities (which are so good that it can
discern patterns, even in random noise where no pattern exists), and a too
willing to believe mind set on the part of Lowell.
More current measurements are ambiguous on the topic. They include:

• The Viking Landers

– Looked for organic compounds in Martian soil, and found no signs

of any.

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– The probes also had three experiments designed to stimulate mi-

crobial activity if any microbes were present in the soil. These
experiments produced an observable signal, but further examina-
tion of the experiments showed that these signals were the result
of inorganic chemical reactions in the soil, and not the result of
biological action.

• ALH84001 (The famous Martian meteorite). The meteorite is an ig-

neous rock, blasted free from the surface of Mars 16 million years ago
by a meteoroid impact, that landed on the antarctic ice sheet around
13,000 years ago. The evidence put forth by the investigation team that
lead them to conclude that there might be fossil remains of Martian
life in the meteorite include:

– Carbonate minerals in the rock that they believe must have been
formed in the presence of liquid water.
– Magnetite grains, which are formed by some bacteria on Earth,
although magnetite is also formed by non-organic processes.
– The presence of various organic and non-organic compounds near
on another, which might have been formed by bacteria.
– Bacteria shaped formations seen in electron microscope images of
the rock. These formations are much smaller than any known
terrestrial fossils of bacteria, however.

Europa
The evidence suggesting that the icy crust of Europa overlies a substan-
tial ocean of liquid water has caused speculation that perhaps microbial life
might exist there; perhaps near sea-floor volcanic vents similar to those where
extromophiles have been found on Earth. In this case, the presumed heat
source in Europa’s interior would be due to tidal squeezing by Jupiter.

Callisto and Ganymede

There is some evidence of liquid water well below the surface of both of these
moons.
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Enceladus
New observations of Enceladus by the Cassini probe show areas that are
geologically young, suggesting that like Europa, it may harbor liquid water
below its ice covered surface.

Titan
One provocative suggestion is that methane based life may exist on Titan.
However recent observations by the Cassini probe suggest that the expected
oceans of methane on Titan’s surface don’t actually exist.
Chapter 13

The Formation of the Solar

System

Initial Phases
The space between the stars contains clouds of cool and cold gas. These
gas clouds are composed largely of hydrogen and helium, as well as some
small grains of dust and soot, and small particles of different types of ices.
If conditions are right, these clouds will be unstable and collapse under their
own gravity.

• The most dense parts of the cloud will collapse most rapidly. Since the
core of the cloud is usually the densest part, the clouds usually develop
a large mass concentration at the center (in the case of the solar system,
this concentration became the sun.)

• If the cloud is rotating (and virtually all of them are), conservation of

angular momentum dictates that the cloud will collapse easily along its
rotation axis, but much less easily inward toward the axis.

At the end of its initial collapse phase then, an interstellar gas cloud will be
a flat, rotating cloud, with a large mass concentration at its center. In the
case of the solar system, this gas cloud is referred to as the solar nebula.

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The Accretion Process

In this flat, rotating gas cloud, the small dust and soot particles will oc-
casionally collide and stick together to form larger particles; this process is
known as accretion. The larger particles will tend to accrete other particles
faster than smaller particles will. So, as the accretion process goes on there
will be a build of of a few large objects from the many small particles that
started out. These large objects will eventually become the planets and large
moons in the solar system.

Growth of the Gas Giant Planets

Due to its rapid initial collapse, the inner part of the solar nebula will be
at higher temperatures than the outer parts. This means that the small
particles of ice in the initial gas cloud will only be able to survive in the
outer part of the solar nebula. If the objects that are growing in the outer
solar system get large enough, then their surface gravity will be high enough
to hold onto the hydrogen and helium gas in the gas cloud (how large is large
enough? around 10 times the mass of the earth or so.) We believe this is
how the gas giant planets formed (notice that this accounts for the fact that
all the gas giant planets have a solid core with a mass in the range 10-15
times that of the earth.)

Final Phases
Eventually the mass at the center (i.e. the proto-Sun) will get large enough
to start nuclear fusion reactions in its core. As this happens, the intense
electro-magnetic radiation produced, along with the intense winds that are
produced by the young star will clear the solar system of any gas that has
not already been incorporated in a large gravitating body, such as the sun
or planets.