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| The Solar System | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 5 2008, 11:55 AM (121 Views) | |
| Kai Stormwalker | Feb 5 2008, 11:55 AM Post #1 |
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Master Sentinel/Scholar/Healer
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The Solar System General Information All the planets rotate on the same plane. This means that when you are looking for a planet in the sky it will always be found in the same arc in the sky that the Sun appears to follow. During the winter this arc is fairly low in the sky while in the summer it is much higher. It is as if all the planets were embedded in an invisible plate which tilts according to the season. The Sun The Sun is 93 million miles from Earth (149 million km). The Sun is the closest star to Earth. It is by far the largest object in the solar system, and contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System (Jupiter contains most of the rest). Its strong gravitational pull holds Earth and the other planets in the solar system in orbit. If the Sun were empty, it would take 1.3 million Earths to fill it up. The temperature on the surface is 6,000 degrees C./11,000 degrees F., while the internal temperature is 15 million degrees C./27 million degrees F. The Sun is sometimes referred to by its Roman name, Sol. That is why the system of planets that revolve around it is called the Solar system. Mercury Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, at only 36 million miles (57 million km). It is the second smallest planet in the solar system. The surface is cratered in a similar way to Earth’s moon. There is a thin atmosphere. Most of Mercury appears to be an iron core. The daytime temperature is 430 degrees C./810 degrees F. But the nighttime temperature is -180 degrees C./-290 degrees F. (It makes me wonder how it could get so cold when the planet is so close to the Sun.) It only takes Mercury 87.97 days to rotate around the sun. (Mercury’s year.) This is faster than any other planet in the solar system, so it was named after the Roman messenger of the gods, who had wings on his feet. Mercury can only be seen from Earth just before sunrise or just after sunset, but not in the middle of the night. That is because Mercury always appears near the Sun when viewed from Earth. Mercury has a very thin atmosphere. The surface of Mercury has holes in it where objects such as meteorites and asteroids crashed into it. Mercury has no moons. Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun, at 67 million miles (108 million km). Venus has been called the morning or evening star. It is the brightest object in Earth’s sky apart from our Sun and moon. It takes Venus 224.7 days to rotate around the Sun. The surface of Venus cannot be seen as it is completely covered by clouds. It’s atmosphere is 97% carbon dioxide which is hostile to life as we know it. The surface pressure is 96 times that of Earth and the temperature is 482 degrees C./900 degrees F. Venus, fittingly named for the goddess of beauty, is the most brilliant of all the planets. It can often be seen even during the day. Ancient civilizations were awed by Venus; the Babylonians called the planet "Ishtar" while the ancient Chinese called it "Tai-pe." Both names symbolize light and beauty. The poet Homer described Venus as "the most beautiful star set in the sky," which is quite odd when you consider that Homer was thought to have been blind. Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun, at 93 million miles (149 million km). The Earth has an elliptical orbit which means that the Earth-Sun distance varies from 91 to 95 million miles at different times. Earth is just right for humans to live on as it is neither too hot or too cold and the atmosphere is made up mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. Earth is the fifth largest planet in the solar system. It has a magnetic field and a liquid nickel-iron core. It takes the Earth 365.25 days to rotate around the Sun. That is why an extra day is added to the calendar every four years. It is called Leap Year. The Earth has one moon, which rotates around the Earth in 27.3 days. It is sometimes referred to by its Roman name, Luna. This is why things referring to the moon are called “lunar.” Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, at 141 million miles (226 million km). It’s gravity is one third that of Earth so you would be able to jump quite high there. Mars is often referred to as “The Red Planet” because of its reddish color which can be seen with the naked eye at certain times of the year. It takes Mars 686.98 days to rotate around the Sun. The average temperature is -55 degrees C./-67 degrees F. Mars has ice caps at both north and south poles, made up of water ice and frozen carbon dioxide. Its atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide, 3 % nitrogen, and 2% argon and trace gases. Like Earth it is tilted on its axis and experiences seasons. It often has ferocious dust storms. Mars has always been especially intriguing to the peoples of Earth. It has captured our imagination for many reasons, two of which are the once-believed speculation that it held intelligent life because of so-called "canals" and then the famous book by H.G. Wells, "The War of the Worlds", that had Martians invading Earth. Mars has two moons named Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Panic). Mars itself was named after the Roman god of war. The Greek version of Mars was the god, Ares, who had tow sons. The moons are named after them. Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in the solar system. If it was hollow, more than one thousand Earths could fit inside. It also contains more matter than all of the other planets combined. It is also the fourth brightest object in the sky after the Sun, the Moon, and Venus. People who see it sometimes mistake it for a satellite. It can be easily viewed with a basic telescope or even binoculars. It is 142,800 kilometers (88,736 miles) across the equator. Jupiter possesses 16 satellites, four of which - Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io - were observed by Galileo as long ago as 1610. There is a ring system, but it is very faint and totally invisible from the Earth. (The ring was discovered in 1979 by Voyager 1.) It takes Jupiter 12 Earth years to orbit around the Sun. Jupiter is considered a gas giant. The atmosphere is very deep, perhaps comprising the whole planet, and is somewhat like the Sun. It is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, with small amounts of methane, ammonia, water vapor and other compounds. Beneath the gas layers, pressure increases to more than 3 million Earth atmospheres. At that level, even hydrogen has properties of a metal and Jupiter has a solid core that must be one of the most hostile places imaginable. Winds there can move at up to 400 mph. In mythology, Jupiter (also known as Jove or Zeus) was the King of the Gods, the ruler of Olympus and the patron of the Roman state. Zeus was the son of Cronus (Saturn). Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the solar system. Like Jupiter, it is a gas giant, with atmospheric pressure condensing hydrogen into liquid and even metal toward its core. Saturn’s temperature is between -130 and -191 degrees C. (-202 and -312 degrees F.). Very cold! Saturn’s rings stretch out more than 84,000 miles (135,000 km) from its center. They were first seen by Galileo in 1610, though he described them as handles, as he saw them end on. The Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens was the first to recognize them as rings separate from the planetary surface. Saturn has fifteen moons, ranging from Titan, the largest, down to Pan, which is about 12.5 miles (20 km) across. Saturn is the Roman name for the Greek name for the Greek god, Cronus, who was the father of Zeus (Jupiter). Uranus Uranus, (pronounced YOOR un nus) is the seventh planet from the Sun, at 1.78 billion miles (2.86 billion km). It is 67 times bigger than Earth, but has a mass only 14.5 times that of Earth. Uranus, with no solid surface, is one of the gas giant planets (the others are Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune). It takes Uranus 84 Earth years to rotate around the Sun. Once considered one of the blander-looking planets, Uranus has been revealed as a dynamic world with some of the brightest clouds in the outer solar system and 11 rings. The first planet found with the aid of a telescope, Uranus was discovered in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel. The atmosphere of Uranus is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, with a small amount of methane and traces of water and ammonia. Uranus gets its blue-green color from methane gas. Sunlight is reflected from Uranus' cloud tops, which lie beneath a layer of methane gas. As the reflected sunlight passes back through this layer, the methane gas absorbs the red portion of the light, allowing the blue portion to pass through, resulting in the blue-green color that we see. The planet's atmospheric details are very difficult to see in visible light. The bulk (80 percent or more) of the mass of Uranus is contained in an extended liquid core consisting primarily of 'icy' materials (water, methane, and ammonia), with higher-density material at depth. Uranus has 27 moons, all named after characters from the plays of William Shakespeare. They are: Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Mab, Belinda, Perdita, Puck, Cupid, Miranda, Francisco, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo, Sycorax, Margaret, Prospero, Setebos, and Ferdinand. In mythology, Uranus was the father of Saturn, grandfather of Zeus/Jupiter. Neptune Neptune, eighth planet from the sun, and the fourth largest in the solar system, is 2.8 billion miles from the Sun. It is the last of the gas giants, being 72 times Earth’s volume and 17 times its mass. It takes Neptune 164.79 Earth years to rotate around the Sun. Astronomers believe that it is composed of ice around a rock core, under an atmosphere of hydrogen, helium, and methane. The discovery of Neptune was one of the triumphs of mathematical astronomy. To account for perturbations in the orbit of the planet Uranus the French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier in 1846 calculated the existence and position of a new planet. That same year the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle (1812-1910) discovered the planet within 1° of that position. Pluto? Once known as the smallest, coldest, and most distant planet from the Sun, Pluto has a dual identity, not to mention being enshrouded in controversy since its discovery in 1930. On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) formally downgraded Pluto from an official planet to a dwarf planet. According to the new rules a planet meets three criteria: it must orbit the Sun, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball, and it must have cleared other things out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. The latter measure knocks out Pluto. (1) A "planet" is a celestial body that (1) is in orbit around the Sun, (2) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (3) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. (2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (1) is in orbit around the Sun, (2) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (3) has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and (4) is not a satellite. Pluto is 3.65 billion miles (5.87 billion km) from the sun. The Hubble telescope has mapped 85% of Pluto’s surface. It has polar ice caps and seems to be a ball of rock and dirty ice. It does have a thin atmosphere of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane. Pluto is large enough to affect the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. However, it is so small and distant that, even knowing it was there, it still took 25 years to find it for the first time in 1930. It took until 1978 for anyone to spot its first moon, Charon. Since then two other moons have been discovered, Nix and Hydra. In Greek mythology, Charon was the boatman who carried the souls of the dead to the underworld - a kingdom that in Roman mythology was ruled by the god, Pluto. |
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| Alexander Kenobi | Feb 9 2008, 04:41 PM Post #2 |
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Padawan Guardian
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Thanks for posting this Master Kai!! I've loved learning everything about our solar sytem and astrology since I was very little. :lol: |
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| JE/DI FLY | Feb 11 2008, 12:02 AM Post #3 |
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The uncanny knowledge the Ancient Seers had of our Universe. Moses was right, and there were other ancient seers, too, who showed an altogether surprising knowledge of how the universe works. Copernicus discovered in A.D. 1475 that the earth is round and travels trough space. It was a revolutionary discovery, in its way perhaps as revolutionary as Darwin's. Of course, Copernicus was reviled not only by his scientific contemporaries but also by some of the religious authorities of his day. Today Nicolas Copernicus is regarded as the founding daddy of modern astronomy. Copernicus was both a scientist and studied the Bible. There were numerous theories of how the earth was "held up" before and during the time of Copernicus and, crazy enough, odd-fables still abound by some, in our day. One, and this is not the most imaginative, which tells of the world being held aloft by a man, who stood on the back of an elephant which in turn stood on the coils of a great snake. Perhaps Copernicus, in his spare moments read the prophet Isaiah who an amazingly – TWOTHOUSAND TWOHUNDRED (2200) years before had said: It is He [God] that sitteth upon the Circle of the earth. 40:22. How did Isaiah know the earth was round 2200 years before the fact came to be accepted by science? Was it because he was writing under the guidance of a superior intelligence? The prophet Job, writing in the year 1000 B.C., pre-empted Copernicus by a staggering – THREETHOUSAND FOURHUNDRED AND SEVENTYFIVE (3475) years when he wrote: He [God] stretcheth out the North over the empty place, [and] hangeth the earth upon NOTHING. 26:7. Can you picture the many smiles people living before Copernicus must have had reading those two statements "the circle of the earth" (everyone could see it was flat) and "He hangeth the earth upon nothing" – why, it was quite easily demonstrated that it is not possible to hang anything on "nothing". Two statements which we know to be true but which are not apparent to the naked eye, that the world is round and that the earth quite literally is held up by nothing. How did Isaiah and Job know what it took science thousands of years after their day to find out? They were both prophets, ancient seers and they both claimed to have a special rapport with the Great Universal Spirit. In A.D.1630 Galileo discovered that the wind was regular in its paths, that rain was caused by heat evaporating the waters of the seas and rivers, and, that the wind carried the vapour in clouds until condensed and fell as rain. Mark the date – A.D.1630. How did the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes, writing about 1000 B.C., all those years before Galileo was born, know what it took science – TWOTHOUSAND SIXHUNDRED (2600) years to find out? Please keep in mind this is long before the invention of HAARP. Listen to what the writer of Ecclesiastes has to say: The wind goeth toward the South, and turneth about unto the North; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to His circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea [is] not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, there they return again. 1:6,7. Reason and observation could not tell the writer of Ecclesiastes, that – he would never have seen a river run uphill anymore than you or I have. One thousand years before Christ and two thousand five hundred years before Galileo – the ancient seer knew! How did they know? All claim the "I AM" told them. Certainly it was not just a series of guesses. So let us ask: Is there an 'it' out there who has contacted certain people at certain times with knowledge that science and wealthy people have done their utmost to suppress? If you can see the Truth in it, the answer, of course, is blatantly obvious, but be careful before you answer the affirmative, because the Truth may well change your politics, your religion and indeed the whole of your life! Winston Churchill is quoted as having once said: "Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business as if nothing had happened." Just as a bell that has been rung cannot be "unrung", the annoying problem with the Truth is that, once you learn it, you can not "unlearn" it. "And ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free." - Jesus Christ, John 8:32. |
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7:09 AM Jul 11