I wrote this for Earth Science class on September 27, 2004.
Since the beginning of the semester we learned about Astronomy. We learned about the Solar System. The first four planets from the Sun are the terrestrial or Earth-like planets. They are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They have solid surfaces. Mercury is full of craters and looks like the Moon because it has no atmosphere. Venus is similar to Earth but has an atmosphere of thick clouds. It is the hottest planet in the Solar System. The only terrestrial planet to have moons besides Earth is Mars. It has two moons: Phobos and Deimos. They are irregularly shaped and are probably captured asteroids from the Asteroid Belt lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the first Jovian, Jupiter-like planets. The rest of the Jovian planets are Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The Jovian planets are all giant masses of gas and have many moons. Beyond Neptune is Pluto and its one moon Charon. Pluto doesn’t really fit into either of the categories of planets and is very small. It lies in the Kuiper Belt among the comets and meteoroids. Sometimes when comets pass near Earth, meteoroids from debris from the passing comet falls into Earth’s atmosphere and cause meteor showers. The meteoroids in the atmosphere are called meteors and once they hit the surface they are called meteorites.
We also learned about the Sun and light. Visible light is just one kind of electromagnetic energy on the electromagnetic spectrum. The shorter the wavelength of electromagnetic energy, the more energy it contains. The order of shortest to longest wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum is gamma rays, x-rays, ultra-violet rays, visible light, infrared waves, microwaves, and radio waves. Radio waves contain both AM and FM radio waves and TV waves. Visible light waves contain the colors of the rainbow which in order from longest wavelength to shortest wavelength are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. When all these colors are put together, they form white light. When light is coming indirectly we see red light which is the reason why the Moon seems a coppery red during a lunar eclipse and why we see red or pink in the sky at sunrise and sunset.
We also learned about different astronomers and their observations such as Aristotle, Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilee, and Isaac Newton. Galileo was the first to use a telescope. Newton discovered the three laws of motion. Finally, we learned about stars beyond our Solar System.
Topic: Astronomy (Read 2174 times)