Chapter 6: Our Solar System 


and Its Origin

4/8/2009 Habbal Astro110-01 Lecture 29 1

 What does our solar system
look like?

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•  The planets are tiny compared to the distances between them
(a million times smaller than shown here), but they exhibit
clear patterns of composition and motion.
•  The patterns are far more important and interesting than
numbers, names, and other trivia !!
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 The scale of the solar system
•  On a 1-to-10 billion scale:
–  Sun is the size of a large grapefruit (14 cm).
–  Earth is the size of a ball point, 15 meters away.

The average distance from the Earth to the Sun defined to be 

one Astronomical Unit (about 150 million kilometers).
–  Pluto (the most distant planet in our solar system) is about 600
meters away (1/3 of a mile).

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 The Sun
•  The Sun is the closest star.
•  Accounts for over 99.9% of mass in the solar system.
•  Composition: 70% H, 28% He, 2% heavier elements.

•  Radius ~ 7 x 105 km


(110x Earthʼs radius)

•  Mass ~ 2 x 1030 kg


(300,000x Earthʼs mass)

•  Surface temp ~ 5800 K

•  Luminosity ~ 

4 x1026 Watts
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 Mercury (0.4 AU from the Sun)
•  made of metal and rock; large iron core
•  no atmosphere
•  very hot and very cold: 425°C (day), –170°C (night)

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 Venus (0.7 AU)
•  nearly identical in size to Earth
•  extreme greenhouse effect
•  even hotter than Mercury: 470°C, both day and night
•  atmospheric pressure equiv. to 1 km deep in oceans
•  no oxygen, no water, …
•  how did it end up so different from Earth?
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 Earth and Moon 

to scale

Earth (1 AU)
•  An oasis of life
•  The only surface liquid water in the solar system
•  about 3/4 of surface covered by water
•  A surprisingly large moon
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 Mars (1.5 AU)
•  Looks Earth-like, but …
•  Cold rocky planet with little atmosphere
•  Water flowed in the distant past: could there have been life?

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 Jupiter (5.2 AU)
•  Distant: >2x as far
from the Sun as Mars.

•  Big ball of gas, 


mostly H/He: 

no solid surface

•  300× Earth mass!


>1000× Earth volume!

•  Many moons, rings…

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 The moons are miniature planets 

and as interesting as Jupiter itself

The four Galilean (first seen by Galileo) moons

Io
 Europa
 Ganymede
 Callisto


has active 
 icy surface +
 largest moon
 large ice

volcanos subsurface 
 in the S.S. Larger
than Mercury
 ball w/craters

ocean?
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 Saturn (9.5 AU)
•  Giant and gaseous like Jupiter
•  Most spectacular rings of the 4 Jovian planets
•  Many moons, including cloud-covered Titan
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 Saturnʼs rings

Rings are NOT

solid; they are
made of
countless
small chunks
of ice and
rock, each
orbiting like a
tiny moon.

Artistʼs conception

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 Saturn
Cassini probe arrived
in July 2004.

Dropped Huygens
probe onto the
surface of Titan.

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 Uranus (19.2 AU)
•  much smaller than
Jupiter/Saturn, but still
much larger than Earth

•  made of H/He gas and

hydrogen compounds
(H2O, NH3, CH4)

•  extreme axis tilt:

nearly tipped on its
“side”

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 Neptune (30.1 AU)
•  Very similar to Uranus
(but much smaller axis
tilt)

•  Many moons,
including unusual
Triton: orbits
“backward

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 Pluto (39.5 AU)
•  A “misfit” among the planets: far from Sun like large
jovian planets, but much smaller than any terrestrial planet.
•  Comet-like composition (ices, rock) and orbit (eccentric,
inclined, 248 years period).

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 Planetary data table

63

50

27

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 Planetary data table

63

50

27

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 Planetary data table

63

50

27

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 Planetary data table

63

50

27

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 Planetary data table

63

50

27

4/8/2009 Habbal Astro110-01 Lecture 29 22

 Planetary data table

63

50

27

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 What are the clues to 

our solar systemʼs formation?

  Patterns of motion (organized)

  Composition (differentiated between terrestrial and Jovian)

  Asteroids and comets (remnants of the formation process)

  Anomalies (massive, random impacts in early solar system)

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 1. The Sun, all planets, and all large moons
orbit and rotate in an organized way.

Counterclockwise,
as seen from
above the north
pole (right hand
rule)

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 2. Terrestrial planets are small, rocky, and close to the Sun.
Jovian planets are large, gas-rich, and far from the Sun.
(What about Pluto?)

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 3. Asteroids & Comets:

“Leftovers” from planet formation
Asteroids: big rocks between
Mars & Jupiter, in the Asteroid
Belt

Comets: dirty snowballs past

Neptune (mostly ice, some rock).
Come from the Kuiper Belt &
beyond.

These objects far outnumber the

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planets and their moons.
 Sun-grazing Three frames taken hours
apart on October 23rd, show
bright SOHO comet number
comets 367 plunging toward the
fiery solar surface, its tail
streaming away from the
Comet 367 Sun located just beyond the
left hand border.
From bottom to top, the
comet's tail grows as the
intensifying solar radiation
heats the frozen comet
material and increases the
time

outflow of gas and dust.

Comet number 367 was not
seen to survive its close
solar encounter.
Because of their orbits,
sungrazers are believed to
belong to a family of comets
produced by the breakup of
106 km a single much larger comet.

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 4. A successful theory of solar
system formation must
explain the major trends, but
also allow for exceptions to
rules.

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 Summary: Four Major Features of our Solar System

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 How did the 

solar system form?

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 According to the nebular
theory, our solar system
formed from the gravitational
collapse of a giant cloud of
interstellar gas.

(nebula = “cloud” in Latin)

First conceived in 1755 by the

German philosopher
Immanuel Kant.

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 The cloud of gas that gave birth to our solar system
resulted from the recycling of gas through many
4/8/2009 generations of Astro110-01
Habbal stars within our
Lecture 29 galaxy. 37
 Stars are born in molecular clouds 

•  Clouds are very cold: ~10-30 K. (273 K = water freezes)
•  Stars form when gravity overcomes thermal pressure.
•  Then gas clumps begin to collapse.

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 Earliest stages of star birth

•  Dense cores of gas in the •  Cloud heats up as it contracts due

larger molecular cloud to conservation of energy:
gravitational potential energy is
collapse due to self-gravity. converted to thermal energy (heat).

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 Rotation is an important
factor during the star birth
process (part 1)
•  As gravity forces a dense core to
become smaller, it spins faster
and faster.

•  This is due to conservation of

angular momentum.
–  Dense cores have a small
amount of initial rotation.
–  As the cores get smaller, they
must spin up to conserve
angular momentum.

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 Rotation is an important
factor during the star birth
process (part 2)
•  Collisions between gas particles in
cloud gradually reduce random
motions and up+down motions.

•  Collisions flatten the cloud into a disk.

•  The result is a rotating protostar with

a rotating disk of gas & dust.

•  The orderly motions of our solar

system today are a direct result of
the solar systemʼs birth in a
spinning, flattened cloud of gas.
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 As gravity
causes cloud
to shrink, its
spin
increases

(conservation
of angular
momentum).

Spinning cloud
also flattens
as it shrinks.

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 Collisions between
gas particles in
cloud gradually
reduce random
motions.

Initial gas cloud has

motions of all
different
ellipticities. But at
the end, only
circular orbits
remain.

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 Spinning
cloud
flattens as it
shrinks.

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 Orderly motions of our solar system
today are a direct result of the solar
systemʼs birth in a spinning,
flattened cloud of gas.

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 Disks around other stars:

Solar systems in the making
Nearby star-forming
regions have 1000ʼs of
young (few Myr) stars.

Most of them (~2/3)

have disks of gas &
dust around them,
which are the
birthplaces for other
solar systems.

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 Disks around other stars:

Solar systems in the making
Plenty of evidence for spinning disks of gas and dust around
other stars, especially around newly formed (few Myr) stars.

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 Disks around other stars:

Solar systems in the making
Plenty of evidence for spinning disks of gas and dust around
other stars, especially around newly formed (few Myr) stars.

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