Michael A.

Seeds:

Universe
Brooks/Cole Thomson Learning
7th Edition
 Chapter 1
Here and Now
Astronomy deals with objects on a vast
range of size scales and time scales.

Most of these size and time scales are

way beyond our every-day
experience.
Humans, the Earth, and even the solar
system are tiny and unimportant on
cosmic scales.
The following slides will take
you on a journey through the
vast range of scales in the
Universe.

From each image to the next

we are zooming out by a
factor of 100.
A Campus Scene
A City View
The Landscape of
Pennsylvania
The Earth
Earth and Moon
Earth Orbiting around the Sun
Earth Orbiting around the Sun

In order to avoid large

numbers beyond our
imagination, we introduce
new units:
1 astronomical unit (AU)
= SunEarth distance =
150 million km
The Solar System
 (Almost) Empty Space
Around our Solar System
The Solar Neighborhood
The Solar Neighborhood
New distance scale:
1 light year (ly) =
distance traveled by light in 1 year
= 63,000 AU = 1013 km
= 10,000,000,000,000 km
(= 1 + 13 zeros)
= 10 trillion km
nearest star to the Sun:
Proxima Centauri, at a distance
of 4.2 light years
The Extended Solar
Neighborhood
The Milky Way Galaxy
The Local Group of Galaxies
The Universe on Very Large
Scales