After
Completing These Learning Activities You Should Be Able To:
After
Completing These Learning Activities You Should Be Able To:
Be able to describe the different types of "solar systems" and efforts to locate other planetary systems.
Figure 1:
Figure 2: Text
Figure 3:
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Read
These Notes:
Most of us think
of a solar system as a gravitationally bound group of bodies, including
planets, which orbit a central star. That would be an appropriate description
of our solar system. However, not all solar systems are like ours. Today,
one very active are of research is to identify planetary systems similar
to our own. The obvious problem of detecting planetary systems similar to
ours is the obvious difficulty of identify planets orbiting distant stars.
Recently, however, several candidates have been identified. One such candidate
is Beta Pectoris (figure 2). A 200-billion mile diameter dust disk encircling
the star reveal an unexpected warp that can be best explained as caused
by the gravitational pull of an unseen planet. Other newly discovered planets
have been detected around the stars 51 Pegasi, 70 Virginis and 47 Ursae
Majoris. Still, planetary systems are thought to be relatively uncommon. More common are multiple star systems. Such systems consist of two or more stars orbiting each other. An example of such a binary system is Lambda Ophiucus (figure 3). Of what types of bodies is our solar system composed? A central Sun. nine planets, moons, asteroids, meteoroids and comets.
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1995 - 2007 P. Noeller All Rights Reserved Updated: February 25, 2007 |
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