The moon also affects the length of day. With the moon’s gravity constantly pulling on Earth, the earth’s rotation slows down dramatically. This is what gives us our twenty four hour days. If we did not have the moon, Earth would spin fast giving us only eight hour days! That would mean only three to four hours of sunlight per day!
Although very thin, Mercury’s atmosphere is made up of trace amounts of gasses including 42% Oxygen, 29% Sodium, 22% Hydrogen, 6% Helium, and 0.5% Potassium. Mercury’s location in the solar system makes it difficult at best to hold at atmosphere as it is in such close proximity to the sun. The atmosphere would only be there for a short amount of time before being blasted off my solar winds, meteoroid bombardment and outgassing (the gas escapes into the
At the equator, the Sun's rotation period is 25.05 days. This slows considerably as latitude increases, to 34.3 days at the poles. When viewed from the Earth, using sunspots as a reference, a time of roughly 27 days is observed. This increase is due to the change in position of the Earth in relation to the Sun over the period of observation time. This is referred to as the Synodic rotation period, whereas the former is the Sidereal rotation period.
As a child, we could not understand the magnificent miracle that takes place for a star to be born. Now we know stars initially form from clouds of dust and gas. The force of gravity makes the dust particles come spiraling in together. As they do, the gravitational energy converts into heat energy and the temperature rises. When the temperature gets high enough, hydrogen nuclei undergo nuclear fusion to form helium nuclei and give out massive amounts of heat and light.
General Science Space Topic: Web Quest on Planets Mars General Science Space Topic: Web Quest on Planets Mars Namesake: Mars Distance from the sun: 22.8 Million Km Diameter: 6792 Km Period of Revolution: 686 days Rotation Period: 24 hours 39 minutes and 35 seconds Moons: Mars has two moons Phobos and Deimos Atmosphere: It consists of 95% Carbon Dioxide, 3% Nitrogen, 1.6 Argon Temperature: The night time temperatures fall well below zero. On those summer days, it can be around 20 degrees Celsius then plummet to -90 C at night. Composition: Mars is made of rock and iron oxides. It's surface is covered in mountains, volcanoes, valleys, ice caps and dried up river beds. Mars is also very dry like a desert.
Global warming is the change in climate due to the greenhouse effect. The sun may be the source of heat to our planet, but if it wasn’t for the greenhouse effect our planet would have an average temperature of 1 degree Fahrenheit, which is not warm enough for some life (National Geographic, 2007). When the heat from the sun comes through the atmosphere a majority of the heat is absorbed in the surface of the earth. The heat that is not absorbed reflects off the earth’s surface and is then sent towards our atmosphere in the form of infrared radiation. Our atmosphere stores gases, known as greenhouse gases, like water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane gas, fluorinated gases, and nitrous oxide.
Red shift occurs when light radiation moves away from an observer. The red shift is seen due to the expansion of the universe and distant light sources (millions of light years away) show red shift corresponding to the rate of increase in their distance from earth. If the universe was very, very hot, as scientists seem to think it was, there must be some remnants of heat left over from the beginning of the universe. In 1965, radio astronomers Arno Panzias and Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin Cosmic
Younger stars have more heavy elements because A. old stars destroy heavy elements as they age B. young stars burn their nuclear fuel faster C. they form out of gas enriched of heavy elements by previous generations of stars D. heavy elements have not had the time to settle in the cores of younger stars E. all of the above 4. Based on the rotation curves of galaxies, most of the mass in galaxies is believed to be in the form of A. neutral hydrogen B. ionized hydrogen C. black holes D. luminous stars E. dark matter 5. Dark Matter is important because A. it holds galaxies together B. it is responsible for the expansion of the Universe C. determines whether a galaxy is an elliptical or a spiral D.
(Dr. Barbara Mattson, 28-Dec-2010) A star cluster or star clouds are groups of stars. Star clusters can be distinguished as global clusters, which are roughly spherical groupings of from10, 000 to several million stars packed into regions of from 10 to 30 light years across. They commonly consist of very old Population II stars—just a few hundred million years younger than the universe itself—which are mostly yellow and red, with mass just less than two solar masses. Such stars predominate within clusters because hotter and more massive stars have exploded as supernovae, or evolved through planetary nebula phases to end as white dwarfs. Open clusters are very different from globular clusters.
Phobos will eventually crash into Mars or break up and form a ring around the planet. Deimos (which means fear) was named after the Greek God Deimos who was the twin brother of Phobos. Deimos is the outer moon so it is further away from Mars and takes about 30 hours to orbit. It is small and lumpy and has lots of craters and is covered in dust and loose rocks. Although it has many craters it’s surface is much smoother than Phobos’ Deimos has an average radius of 6.2