Astronomy Revision

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 Recall…
You must know:
• That the Earth is an oblate spheroid (flattened
sphere) – 1.1f
• Diameter of the Earth is 13 000km – 1.1f
• The rotation of the Earth is 23 hours 56 mins –
1.1h
• Earth rotates through 1 degree in 4 minutes –
1.1h
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 Recall…
You must know:
• Moon’s diameter is 3500km – 1.2b
• The Moon is 380 000km from Earth – 1.2b
• Rotational and orbital period are both 27.3
days – 1.2c
• Sun’s diameter 1.4 million km – 1.3b
• Sun is 150 million km from Earth (1 AU) – 1.3b

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 Recall…
You must know:
• Sun’s photosphere is 5800K – 1.3c
• Sun’s rotational period is 25 days at equator
and 36 days at the pole – 1.3f
• Period of the lunar phase cycle is 29.5 days –
1.4b
• The order of the planets (dwarf as well) – 2.1b
– M, V, E, M, Ceres, J, S, U, N, P, Eris

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 Recall…
You must know:
• The Earth’s orbit around the Sun is called the
ecliptic – 2.1d
• Planets orbit in elliptical orbits that are
inclined (slightly) to the ecliptic – 2.1f
• Polaris is at a declination of +90o and that
Polaris remains fixed in the sky – 3.2b
• Stars cross the observer’s meridian and
culminates due south – 3.2m
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 Recall…
You must know:
• One parsec (1pc) is the distance as which a
star has a parallax angle of 1 arcsec – 3.3f
• Absolute magnitude (M) the true brightness
of the star if it was placed at a distance of
10pc – 3.3g
• Milky Way is a Sb type galaxy – prominent
bulge and pronounced arms – 4.2c

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 Recall…
You must know:
• Types of AGN are Seyfert galaxies, blazars and
quasars and the differences – 4.2g
• Know the names of some galaxies in the Local
Group – Large Magellanic Cloud, Small
Magellanic Cloud, Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
and Triangulum Galaxy (M33)

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 Recall…
You must know:
• The ‘Doppler Principle’ is the observed change
in frequency of light from a galaxy. It appears
red shifted – the more red shifted it is the
faster the galaxy is moving away (radial
velocity).
• QUASAR (QUASi-stellAR radio source) are very
powerful active galaxies that are a long way
away – QUASARs have high redshifts.

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Topic 1 – Earth, Moon and Sun

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 Round Earth?

Remember the
Earth is not
actually spherical
You can see theanbottom
it is oblateof the wind
turbines disappearing in the distance, this
spheroid
is because the Earth is round – if it was
flat you would still be able to see the
bottom of the turbine.
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 Mr Blue Skies
Molecules in air are
very small, red light
has a long wavelength
so does not scatter,
blue has a smaller
wavelength so scatter
the most. At sunset
the light travels
further so more
chance of hitting
DID YOU KNOW?
(larger)makedust particles
Why is the sky blue?
Volcanoes release lots of dust so can actually the sky appear
red in colour!– leading to a red sky.
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3rd rock from the Sun
• Atmosphere is very
important it
protects against
radiation and small
meteors and it
retains the heat.
• Earth is 71% water
important for life.
• Magnetic field also
protects from
radiation and flares.
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 Light time!
Main Sources:
• Sodium street
lights
• Motorways
• Houses
• Floodlights
• Security lights
• Shopping centres

Sky glow (light pollution) means only

low magnitude stars can be viewed in
urban areas
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Earth’s Circumference
Need to be able:
• To describe this
experiment
• The assumptions
made
• Inaccuracies in
the experiment

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Key Definitions

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 Refracting Telescope
Gathers light Incoming light
and bends Lens
Objective it is bent into a
into focus bright
Focuspoint Pupil of
the eye

Brings the bright

image fromEyepiece
the focus
and magnifies it to the
size of your eyes pupil
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Reflective Telescope
Eye piece

Primary mirror
secondary mirror
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Twinkle, twinkle…
Light from distant
stars get refracted in
the atmosphere of
the Earth as
different
temperatures of air
have different
densities
(thicknesses) so get
refracted by
different amounts.
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The Atmosphere

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 Type of
Telescope electromagnetic Electromagnetic Does it penetrate the Earth’s
radiation detected radiation atmosphere?
Hubble Visible light Gamma waves Stopped 50km above Earth’s
surface
Jodrell Bank Radio waves X-rays Stopped 200km above Earth’s
surface
Compton Gamma waves Visible light Yes

Spitzer Infra-red Infra-red Only shorter wavelengths

Chandra X-rays Radio waves Yes

Using these two tables answer the following questions:

1. Which two telescopes could be ground-based? Why?
2. Which telescopes must be placed on a satellite? Why?
3. The Hubble telescope is placed on a satellite in space
despite the fact that visible light can penetrate the
Earth’s atmosphere. Why do you think astronomers
chose to do this?
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 The
Crab
Nebula

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Observatory

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Van Allen Belt

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 Little gravity
means the Moon
cannot hold onto
an atmosphere

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Mares
• Caused by a large
impact about 3.8
billion years ago
• Impacted deep to
the mantle
• Lava flowed to the
surface creating a
smooth surface

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Far Side
• Because of this
we only ever
see 58% of the
Moon
• First time we
saw the first
time was with
Luna 3 (Russian)
and Apollo 8
with astronauts
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Far side
• Very little
mare
• Lots of impact
craters and
highlands
• Protects the
Earth from
meteors

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Rilles and Wrinkle Ridges
Rilles
• Caused by collapsed
lava tube
Wrinkle Ridges
Rilles • When the basalt
lava cooled
• Designated by the
name dorsa e.g.
Dorsa Smirnov
Wrinkle Ridgewww.astronomygcse.cf
 Giant Impact Hypothesis
A large Mars sized object (Theia) collided with
the Earth 4.5 billion years ago

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 Apollo
President Kennedy stated
the purpose was
“To land a man on the
Moon and return him
safely to Earth”
ALSEPs placed on the
Moon (Apollo Lunar
Surface Experiments
Packages)
- Mirror
- Seismometer
- Magnetometer
- Particle detector
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 Sunspots
Projection of
sunspots using
a telescope
means they
can be plotted
over several
days to work
out the
rotational
period of the
Sun
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 Lunar Phases

The Moon phase cycle is 29.5 days but it

orbits in 27.3 days, why is there this
difference of 2.2 days?
The Earth is also orbiting the Sun at the same time the
Moon is orbiting the Earth this movement of the Earth
accounts www.astronomygcse.cf
for the extra time.
Solar Eclipse

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 Solar Eclipse
Corona

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Lunar Eclipse

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Eclipses

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Blood Moon

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 A day…
When the Earth makes one revolution
Sidereal Day to bring us to the same position with
the background stars

When the Sun is directly over head

Solar Day (zenith) the next day – 24 hours

So why is the sidereal day different to the solar day?

The Earth has orbited around the Sun approximately 1 degree

every day which means the Earth has to rotate a further one
degree which takes 4 minutes – this is why the solar day is 4
minutes longer than the sidereal day (23 hours and 56 minutes)
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Apparent Solar time is the time
that is shown on a sundial

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 Aurorae
• Electrons travel
into the open
magnetic field lines
• Electrons excite
atims to become
ions in the upper
atmosphere
• As ions lose energy
they emit light
called aurorae
Red aurorae – Nitrogen
Green aurorae - Oxygenwww.astronomygcse.cf
Topic 2 – Planetary Systems

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The Solar System

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The Zodiac

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Retrograde Motion

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Venus – A danger
Venus has an
advanced
greenhouse
effect so
temperature
s are much
greater
than would
be expected
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 Exploration

Cassini – Huygens 1997 Probe to Saturn and it’s moons

Space probes have been sent out from

Earth since the 1970s the explore the
Solar System and to see what cannot be
seen with naked eye observations
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Manned Exploration

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 Moons of the Solar System
Mars – Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Terror)
Jupiter – Galilean Moons: Io, Callisto, Europa,
Ganymede.
Saturn – Titan
Uranus – Named after
Shakespearean
characters: Miranda
Neptune - Triton

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Long period comets are thought to have come from
thewww.astronomygcse.cf
Oort cloud
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Meteor showers are
commonly known as
shooting stars

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Protection

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Warning from the past

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 Discoveries
Collected a detailed star catalogue and
Nicolaus accurate measurements of the position of the
planets (without a telescope).
Copernicus Used Brahe’s observations to create his 3
laws of planetary motion which accurate
Tycho predictions – deduced the orbits were
elliptical not circular
Brahe
Came up with the heliocentric model with
Galileo helped describe the retrograde motion
observed with planets such as Mars.
Galilei
First person to turn a telescope to the
Johannes heavens and discovered the ‘four moons’ of
Jupiter – helped to prove the heliocentric
Kepler model (which the Church was not happy
about) also first person to oberve craters
and highlands on the Moon and Sunspots.
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 Second Law
Kepler’s
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Kepler’s Third Law
The orbital period of a planet squared is
proportional to it’s mean distance from
the Sun cubed
𝑇2 = 𝑟3
Where T = the orbit (period) given in years
R = the mean distance from the Sun in AU

The size of the orbit’s ellipse tells you how much time the planet
takes to complete one orbit
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 Calculations
As you know from the ‘Transit Method’ in
our lessons on exoplanets by recording
the period of the planet you can calculate
how far that planet is from it’s star

Practice
How far away is Saturn from the Sun it’s
period is 29.5 years

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William Herschel
• Discovered
Uranus from this
plinth, first
planet to be
discovered using
a telescope.
• Originally named
Georgium Sidus
after George III

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Neptune
John Adams
mathematically tried
to calculate where this
‘unknown’ planet was
(all by hand!) and he
sent his results to
some astronomers who
never checked them
properly!
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 Neptune
At French Astronomer called Le Verrier
calculated where the planet should be and
his prediction was confirmed by Galle and
D’Arrest (23rd September 1846) using the
Fraunhofer telescope in Berlin

The English did not take this well and even

claimed that they discovered it first, which
led to a lot of controversy – credit was later
given to the French and Germans
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 Pluto
• Discovered by Clyde Tombaugh on the 18th
February 1930
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/common/content/multim
edia/BlinkComparator/blinkComparator.html

Venetia Burney named

the planet from a
newspaper competition
when she was 11, she
was from Oxford
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 Dwarf Planets
• When Pluto got downgraded it also meant
the Ceres got upgraded.
• In the 1700s it was suggested that there
should be a planet between Mars and
Jupiter.
• Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres in 1801.
• Herschel disagreed and said it wasn’t a
planet – it was an asteroid (meaning star-
like)
• It is now large enough to be classified as a
dwarf planet
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 Newton
• Sir Isaac Newton identified a force of
attraction of gravity between two objects
was dependent on their mass and the Inverse
distance apart, Square
• This force decreased as the distance Law
increased

• Newton’s law of Universal gravitation changed

ideas on Kepler’s 3rd law (which assumed a
stationary body with something orbiting it).
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Pluto and Charon
• With pluto and it’s
moon Charon the 2
objects have a
similar mass.
• This means they
exert similar
forces on each
other
• So have a common
centre of mass
they orbit around
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 Exoplanets
• First exoplanet (extrasolar planet) was
found in 1995

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 Exoplanets
Radial Velocity Method
Where a planet orbiting a Photometry
star causes the star to
‘wobble’ and this will cause If an exoplanet is being
a red/blue shift of the star observed in orbit around
it’s star from ‘side on’, when
the exoplanet transits
across a star the light
intensity detected from
Astrometry the star drops. From this
the period of the star can
Planets orbiting stars can
be detected and therefore
cause it to ‘wobble’ but
the distance from the star.
only if it is seen to us as
above
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 Exoplanets
• Currently due to the sensitivity of the
telescopes the exoplanets need to be
very large e.g. size of Jupiter or very
close.
• This is due to the inverse square law,
which means the smaller the planet, or
the further the planet is away the
weaker the effect of gravity gets.

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Goldilocks Zone

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 Water, water everywhere…
Rosetta probe from the ESA is planning to
set a probe onto a comet in May 2014 and
should tell astronomers about whether
comets were the source of water on Earth

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Drake Equation

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 Drake Equation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature
=player_embedded&v=6AnLznzIjSE
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Command and Conquer

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Topic 3 – Stars

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 Stars
• Points of light in the sky of different
colours and brightness (magnitude)
• Lower magnitude the brighter they are
• Red stars are cool
• Blue/white are hot!
• Many stars are double stars – binary
systems, so close they orbit each other
• Optical doubles – only look like doubles
from our point of view but can be far apart

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 Asterisms, constellations and
double stars
• The plough is an
example of an
ALCOR MIZAR

asterism part
of the
constellation
URSA MAJOR
• Alcor and Mizar
are an example
of an optical
double –
actually 3 ly
apart
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 Asterism
Asterisms are often more recognisable
than constellations and can be made up as
you see fit!

Teapot of Sagittarius
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 Constellations
• There are 88 recognised constellations
in the night sky
• Constellations are a pattern of stars
• Ancient Egyptians used stars to help
with agriculture e.g. Appearance of
Sirius rising in the morning sky
predicted the flooding of the Nile
• 12 Zodiac constellations have been quite
consistent through history.
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Timeline of constellations

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The Name Game

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Clusters and Nebulae

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 Pointers Take
special
Follow the ‘arc’
note of
to Arcturus
the star
mag -0.05
names as
brightest star
this could
in northern
be a
hemisphere.
multiple
4th brightest in
choice
sky
question

Follow the opposite

direction to find the
www.astronomygcse.cf constellation Leo
Pointers M45
example
of a
bright
Open
Cluster

Aldebaran
an orange
giant star

Sirius – the Dog

star
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Pointers
Furthest away object
that can be seen with
the naked eye (2.4M ly
away)

The top left hand

star of the square
of Pegasus is
actually part of
Andromeda

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RA and Dec

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 Polaris
Person
standing at
a latitude of
50° N will
see Polaris
50 ° above
the horizon.

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Circumpolar stars

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Measuring the Sidereal Day

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 Messier Catalogue
• The best known catalogue of deep sky
objects
• 110 objects are given the ‘M number’
• M1 first object he saw (Crab Nebula)

M31 - M33 -
Andromeda Whirlpool

M1 –Crab
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nebula
 The Night Sky
Why does it appear that the
night sky moves from an
east-west direction?
The Earth rotates in an
anticlockwise direction

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Apparent Magnitude
Apparent magnitude
The brightness of a
star as you see it in
the night sky
Absolute magnitude
The brightness of a
star is it was at a
distance of 10pc

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Parallax
Parallax the
apparent
movement
of nearby
stars on
the
celestial
sphere
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 A Parsec (pc)

1 pc = 3.26 light years

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 Distance Modulus
𝑀 = 𝑚 + 5 − 5 lg 𝑑
M = Absolute magnitude
M = Apparent magnitude
d = distance (in parsecs)

Use the table to calculate the absolute magnitude

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Answer

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Another Example

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Cepheid Variable
Cepheid
Variables can
vary by up to
30% in size
during a cycle

The longer the

cycle the larger
the Cepheid
variable
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Binary stars and Light curve

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 Spectral Type
An absorption spectrum is produced if the
light from a star passes through a gas

A continuous spectrum is produced when

light from a hot source has no other factors
affecting it

An emission spectrum is produced by a hot

star or gas cloud
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Temperature of stars

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 Classification of Stars
The Harvard System

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Colour and Temp cont…

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H-R Diagram simplified

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 H-R Diagram Complex
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 Life Cycle of a Star
Make sure you know the life cycle of a
star
• Neutron stars are made of neutrons
• Intense heat causes protons and
electrons to combine to form more
neutrons
• Neutrons stars have the mass of our
Sun condensed into 20km

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 Life Cycle continued
• Strong gravitational fields cause the Neutron
star to spin and give off radio waves
• These are known as PULSARS
• If the Neutron star is more than 3 solar
masses the gravitational field is so large a
Black Hole forms
• A black hole would only be 1.5km across!

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Evidence for a neutron star

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Evidence for black holes

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Topic 4 – Galaxies & Cosmology

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 The Milky Way

On a clear dark night the Milky way can

be seen stretching across the sky passing
through Cassiopeia and Cygnus
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 The Milky Way
158 known globular
clusters and all
found in this halo
region. They all
started life as the
galaxy formed

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 Radio Astronomy
• Hydrogen is abundant
in the Universe, when
hydrogen aborbes
energy the electron is
excited and a
spectral absorption
line is produced and
this is at a wavelength (for hydrogen) at
21cm, this is in the band of radio waves.
We can analyse these radio waves.
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Radio Astronomy
Calculating the orbital speed of
the Galaxy and then looking at
the amount of mass in it made
us realise that there must be
something else holding the
galaxy – something we couldn’t
seen: DARK MATTER

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 Galaxies
Four types of galaxies

Elliptical
Spiral
Barred Spiral
Irregular

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Match the Galaxy

Barred Spiral Spiral

Elliptical Irregular
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Hubble’s Tuning Fork

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Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN)
Active galaxies
have a black hole
at the centre
which is far
bigger than
normal like M87
which has
swallowed 2 mill
of our Suns
Matter near a black hole is spun so fast it’s
flattened into the accretion disk, this and
the black hole produce AGNs
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 AGNs Cont…
AGNs has so much mass and are
spinning so fast that really powerful
radiation are emitted from them
Radio
Optical
X-rays
Gamma rays
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 Local Group
• Contains 30
Galaxies are found in galaxies
groups/clusters. Usually small in
• Interact
number say 30/40 clusters there
are even larger clusters known as gravitational
superclusters. The Virgo cluster is • With these
a supercluster with 2000 galaxies galaxies we
interacting gravitationally observe blue
shift!

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Doppler Shift

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 Radial velocity/Doppler
shift of a galaxy
𝜆 − 𝜆𝑜 𝑣
=
𝜆𝑜 𝑐
λ = new wavelength measured from the
spectrum (nm)
λo = wavelength measured from the spectrum
– not moving/normal value (nm)
v = radial velocity (km/s)
c = speed of light (300,000 km/s)
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Radial Velocity

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 QUASARs
• QUASARs (QUASi-stellAR (star like)
radio source) are very powerful active
galaxies wit high redshifts
• BLAZARs are the same as QUASARs
but he jets of material being shot from
the nucleus are right at us.
• Discovered in 1950s by radio
astronomers.

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 Hubble’s Law

Speed of recession = Hubble constant x distance

𝑣 = 𝐻𝑑
𝐻 = 70.8 ± 1.6 𝑘𝑚 𝑠 −1 𝑀𝑝𝑐 −1
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Hubble’s Law Calculation

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 Age of the Universe
• H shows the galaxies moving apart
so…
1
• should show the galaxies moving
𝐻
together, playing the video in
reverse to the point of the Big
Bang.
• This gives us the age of about 13.7
billion years.
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 CMB
• Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)
• BB would release huge amounts of
energy and then cool to 3K at this point
mircowaves would be emitted

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Penzias and Wilson
• Trying to remove
noise
• Phoned Princeton
• Told they found
CMB
• Found peak at 2.7K
– close to
prediction
• Won Noble Prize
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CMB

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 WMAP
• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
has studied CMB in detail and has:
– Confirmed age of Universe
– Shown existence of dark energy
– Limited effects of dark matter
– Defined stages of Universe development
more accurately
– Data produced on first fraction of a second
of Universe
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 The Beginning of the Universe
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=play
er_embedded&v=DmUiCweDic4

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Dark Matter
Cluster of stars
help to
together in the
Coma galaxy
gravitationally,
but to hold this
together it
would require
x5 more matter

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Gravitational Lensing
Blue galaxies
in a ring are
from behind
this cluster
but dark
matter causes
a lens affects
that beings
them to the
foreground
and elongated

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Dark Energy
Experiments in
1998 showed the
Universe to still be
expanding (in fact
the rate is
accelerating)
althought they
thought it was
slowing down
originally
Dark energy makes
up 73% of the
Universe.
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 Arguments for BB
BB Starts • Singularity

Heat
generated
• Expansion

Temp
cooled

Dark Age • No light through dense

cloud

Material
coalesces • Stars form

Galaxies
Form
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 Timeline of Cosmology
• Use starlearner and read up on this!
• Very last spec point

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