ASTRONOMY 1101 Homework #1 -- SOLUTIONS

#1. I chose "The Case of the Missing Supernova Companion" on 12 January 2012 [I chose this because I provided the picture and because this picture epitomizes an important new science result of mine that has hit the bigtime. Articles on my discovery have appeared in many papers worldwide, and I am getting congratulations from Nobel Prize winners. For the NASA press release, see http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/supernova-source_prt.htm or http://www.phys.lsu.edu/SNprogenitor/.] #2. Auriga. [Look at the star chart on page S-2 in the back of the textbook {the other monthly star charts are similar}, as this depicts the evening sky in January. The horizons are all around the edge of the circular area. The zenith, i.e. straight up in the sky, is at the center of the chart. At the Center is the bright star labeled "Capella" in the constellation of Auriga. And indeed, when I go out in the evening, Capella and Auriga are shining overhead. Taurus (with the Pleiades and its bright star Aldebaran) and Gemini (with its twing bright stars Castor and Pollux) not far from zenith on winter evenings.] #3. B. Ices with a rocky core [Pluto is more dense than ices and less dense than rock. This situation comes from Pluto being made up of both rock and ice so as to get an intermediary density. With detailed modeling, Pluto likely has a rocky core {all the heavy rock has settled to the 'bottom'} surrounded by a big ice ball. {It is kinda like a vicious snowball made by Calvin with a rock in the middle.}] #4. C. Hydrogen [The gas giant planets are hydrogen, and most of the rest helium. This is the same composition as our Sun, and indeed for all the stars visible in the night sky. {There is a causal connection between this universal composition, as that is what is produced by the Big Bang, and then this gas forms both all the stars and the planets. Only in special cases, like for the rocky planets, does some part of the gas fractionate out as to a separate composition.] #5. ROCKY Earth Ceres Mercury Meteor GASSY Saturn Jupiter ICY Saturns rings Titan Eris Pluto

#6. Trees, then airplane/mountain/cloud, then our Moon, then Sun/planets, and the Stars are the most distant. [Various pictures show that the trees are closest of all, and that airplanes, clouds, and mountains are between the trees and the Moon. {Variously, we all have seen each of clouds, airplanes, and mountains passing in front of and behind the others, so we realize that the three are at varying distances that have overlapping ranges.} The solar eclipses show that the Moon is closer than the Sun. The Venus and Mercury transits of the Sun show these two planets to be closer than the Sun The occultation images show the Moon to be closer than the planets and the stars. {Other images and data, not shown here, have the Sun passing in front of the outer planets, as well as the planets passing in front of the stars.} On the pictorial evidence, we can only say that Venus and Mercury were at some times closer than the Sun (and farther than the Moon), but like clouds/airplanes/mountains, the Sun and planets have comparable distances with overlapping ranges.]

#7.

C. 3.3 yards [Neptune is close to 30 AU from our Sun, which is represented as 100 yards in our scaled model. With the Earth-Sun distance being 1 AU, this is just 1/30 of the Neptune-Sun distance, so it is just 100/30 yards in our scale model. The general solution is to set up a proportionality between the scale model and real life. That is, the ratio of the distances between the bodies in reality and in the scale model will always be the same regardless of the two bodies. So this ratio for the Sun-Neptune distance, 100yards/30AU, must be the same as the ratio for the Sun-Earth distance, X/1AU, where X is the number of yards separating the Earth and Sun in this scale model. So, X/1AU=100yards/30AU or X=100yards*(1AU/30AU) = (100/30)yards = 3.3 yards.] #8. (a) 3844 hours or about half a year. [Looking at the speedometer in my car, 65 mph is close to 100 km/hour. {From page 13 of the textbook, one mile is 1.609 km; so 65 mph is more accurately equal to 104.6 km/hr.} From Appendix 3, the Moon is typically 384400 km from Earth. The time it takes to travel there is (384400km)/(100km/hr)=3844 hr. This equation comes from one of the most fundamental equations of DISTANCE=RATExTIME, where here we have simply solved for TIME=DISTANCE/RATE. Note that the division by 100 is easy, by just shifting the position of the decimal point. This problem does not need high accuracy {nor is it practical to keep a steady 65 mph the whole time of driving}, so the answer (384400km)/(104.6km/hr)=3674.9 hr is just putting on airs. 3844 hours is 160 days and about half a year. If you only drove for ~10 hours a day, then it would take you a year to drive to the Moon.] (b) 171 years. [The speed of 65 mph is close to 100 km/hour. Appendix 6 gives the AU distance as 1.5x108 km (150,000,000 kilometers). With the formula distance=rate X time, we have that the time to travel to the Sun is (1.5x108 km)/(100 km/hour) = 1.5x106 hours. With 24 hours in a day and 8760 hours per year, the time is (1.5x106 hour)x(1/8760 hour/year) = 171 years. The Sun is a long way away.] #9. B. The report of Aratus is true, as shown in the April-May evening charts The horizon is represented by the circular edge of the charts, with the top edge indicating the direction of the northern horizon, and so on. In the April and May charts, Orion is setting in the west while Scorpion is rising in the east, hence confirming Aratus report. Precession does move the stars a bit, but this effect is negligibly small for this purpose. #10. I chose Orion. In Greek legend, it represents a great hunter who threatened to kill all the animals in the world. One of the stories about how he died was that Zeus made a great scorpion who rose up out of the Earth to sting Orion to death. To commemorate this great hunter, Zeus put Orion in the sky, and he placed the Scorpion in the opposite side of the sky so that the two are never above the horizon at the same time. The Egyptians used the same stars to represent their god Osiris. Orion is easily seen high in the south on any winter evening. Orion has many bright stars in easily identified patterns (including the three belt stars). The two brightest stars in Orion are Betelgeuse (a red supergiant) in the left shoulder and Rigel (a blue supergiant) in the right knee. Visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy star at the position of Orions sword is the Great Nebula in Orion, a huge gas cloud where stars are being birthed.