SOLAR SYSTEMS

A PRESENTATION ON STARS AND THEIR ORBITALS.

DEFINITIONS
Solar System: Consists of the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity.
This includes the 8 planets and their moons, the asteroids, the dwarf
planets, all the Kuiper belt objects, the meteoroids, comets and
interplanetary dust.
Galaxy: large system of stars held together by mutual gravitation and
isolated from similar systems by vast regions of space. The Milky Way
measures about 100,000 light-years across, and is thought to contain 200
billion stars.
Universe: the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena
throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm.

IN SUMMARY.

We live on planet Earth which is part of our local Solar System.

Our Solar System includes the Sun and everything that orbits the Sun.
Our Sun, is just one Star in the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Milky Way Galaxy is just one Galaxy in the Universe.

THE SUN

The star at the center of our solar system

is called the Sun, or Sol. It is one star in a
galaxy of more than 200 billion stars. The
Sun and solar system rotate with the rest
of the galaxy at about 175 miles per
second. That means it takes about 240
million years for the Sun and our solar
system to rotate all the way around the
galaxy.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Our solar system is made up of a star - the Sun - eight planets,

approximately 146 moons, comets, asteroids and space rocks, ice and
several dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

All the planets have there own path along which they revolve around
the sun. This path is called an orbit. They are represented by white
lines in the figure to the right.

The image above shows the planets and their relative sizes when compared
to each other. Earth is the fourth smallest in the solar system. All the planets
however, are dwarfed by the massiveness of the sun. It is its huge mass
which is responsible for its strong gravitational pull which keeps all the
planetary bodies in their respective orbits. Over time however, the orbital
patterns of each planets were said to have changed until it attained the
stable pattern we know today.

SOLAR SYSTEM FACTS

After the Sun and the Moon, Venus is the
brightest object in Earth's sky.
Many of the planets in the solar system are
visible to the naked eye.
It is estimated that at least a third of the
200 billion stars in the Milky Way are orbited
by one or more planets.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the furthest
man-made object in the solar system, it is
around 11 billion miles (18 billion km) from
the sun and is still sending data back to
Earth.
The solar system is around 4.6 billion years
old.

BEYOND OUR GALAXY

Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky
Way Galaxy. Our Galaxy is thought to look much like
Andromeda. Together these two galaxies dominate the
Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda
is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose
it. The several distinct stars that surround Andromeda's
image are actually stars in our Galaxy that are well in front
of the background object. Andromeda is frequently referred
to as M31 since it is the 31st object on Messier's list of
diffuse sky objects. M31 is so distant it takes about two
million years for light to reach us from there. Although
visible without aid, the above image of M31 is a digital
mosaic of 20 frames taken with a small telescope. Much
about M31 remains unknown, including how it acquired its
unusual double-peaked center.