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My little golden book about the solar system
A simple yet informative book about the solar system for preschoolers, featuring information about planets, constellations, satellites, spacecraft, and more.-- Source other than Library of Congress.
Book
Solar System Physics for Exoplanet Research
Over the past three decades, we have witnessed one of the great revolutions in our understanding of the cosmos-the dawn of the Exoplanet Era. Where once we knew of just one planetary system (the solar system), we now know of thousands, with new systems being announced on a weekly basis. Of the thousands of planetary systems we have found to date, however, there is only one that we can study up-close and personal-the solar system. In this review, we describe our current understanding of the solar system for the exoplanetary science community-with a focus on the processes thought to have shaped the system we see today. In section one, we introduce the solar system as a single well studied example of the many planetary systems now observed. In section two, we describe the solar system's small body populations as we know them today-from the two hundred and five known planetary satellites to the various populations of small bodies that serve as a reminder of the system's formation and early evolution. In section three, we consider our current knowledge of the solar system's planets, as physical bodies. In section four we discuss the research that has been carried out into the solar system's formation and evolution, with a focus on the information gleaned as a result of detailed studies of the system's small body populations. In section five, we discuss our current knowledge of planetary systems beyond our own-both in terms of the planets they host, and in terms of the debris that we observe orbiting their host stars. As we learn ever more about the diversity and ubiquity of other planetary systems, our solar system will remain the key touchstone that facilitates our understanding and modeling of those newly found systems, and we finish section five with a discussion of the future surveys that will further expand that knowledge.
Journal Article
A history of the solar system
\"This well illustrated book presents a compact history of the Solar System from its dusty origins 4,600,000 years ago to the present day. Its primary aim is to show how the planets and their satellites, comets, meteors, interplanetary dust, solar radiation and cosmic rays continually interact, sometimes violently, and it reflects humanity's progress in exploring and interpreting this history. The book is intended for a general readership at a time when human and robotic exploration of space is often in the news and should also appeal to students at all levels. It covers the essentials but refers to a large literature which can be accessed via the Internet.\"--Page [4] cover.
Book
Lifetime of the solar nebula constrained by meteorite paleomagnetism
A key stage in planet formation is the evolution of a gaseous and magnetized solar nebula. However, the lifetime of the nebular magnetic field and nebula are poorly constrained. We present paleomagnetic analyses of volcanic angrites demonstrating that they formed in a near-zero magnetic field (<0.6 microtesla) at 4563.5 ± 0.1 million years ago, ~3.8 million years after solar system formation. This indicates that the solar nebula field, and likely the nebular gas, had dispersed by this time. This sets the time scale for formation of the gas giants and planet migration. Furthermore, it supports formation of chondrules after 4563.5 million years ago by non-nebular processes like planetesimal collisions. The 1core dynamo on the angrite parent body did not initiate until about 4 to 11 million years after solar system formation.
Journal Article
Ringed versus Ringless Worlds: How Poynting–Robertson Drag Shapes Rings across the Solar System
Planetary rings are not only ubiquitous around the giant planets in the outer solar system, but have also been discovered around several small distant bodies. In contrast, no rings have been observed around any inner solar system objects. To constrain the dynamical origin of this ringed-versus-ringless dichotomy, we employ a numerically cross-checked analytical model of gigayear-scale Poynting–Robertson (PR) drag due to the solar flux acting on an isolated particle, expressed as a function of the host body’s heliocentric distance apla and the particle radius rpar. Here we show that, in the absence of additional perturbations, PR drag alone can explain the observed ring architecture of the solar system: outer planets and Centaurs/trans-Neptunian objects are able to retain rings for the age of the solar system, whereas any rings around the inner planets are removed on much shorter timescales. Because the PR-drag lifetime scales steeply with heliocentric distance (τdecay∝apla2rpar) , we predict that forthcoming surveys will reveal an ever-growing population of ring-bearing bodies in the distant solar system.
Journal Article
Solar system maps : from antiquity to the space age
In recent years, there has been increased interest in our Solar System. This has been prompted by the launching of giant orbiting telescopes and space probes, the discovery of new planetary moons and heavenly bodies that orbit the Sun, and the demotion of Pluto as a planet. In one generation, our place in the heavens has been challenged, but this is not unusual. Throughout history, there have been a number of such world views. Initially, Earth was seen as the center of the universe and surrounded by orbiting planets and stars. Then the Sun became the center of the cosmos. Finally, there was no center, just a vast array of galaxies with individual stars, some with their own retinue of planets. This allowed our Solar System to be differentiated from deep-sky objects, but it didn't lose its mystery as more and more remarkable bodies were discovered within its boundaries.
Book
Orbital and Absolute Magnitude Distribution of Jupiter Trojans
Jupiter Trojans (JTs) librate about the Lagrangian stationary centers L4 and L5 associated with this planet on typically small-eccentricity and moderate-inclination heliocentric orbits. The physical and orbital properties of JTs provide important clues about the dynamical evolution of the giant planets in the early solar system, as well as populations of planetesimals in their source regions. Here we use decade-long observations from the Catalina Sky Survey (station G96) to determine the bias-corrected orbital and magnitude distributions of JTs. We distinguish the background JT population, filling smoothly the long-term stable orbital zone about L4 and L5 points and collisional families. We find that the cumulative magnitude distribution of JTs (the background population in our case) has a steep slope for H ≤ 9, followed by a moderately shallow slope until H ≃ 14.5, beyond which the distribution becomes even shallower. At H = 15 we find a local power-law exponent 0.38 ± 0.01. We confirm the asymmetry between the magnitude-limited background populations in L4 and L5 clouds characterized by a ratio 1.45 ± 0.05 for H < 15. Our analysis suggests an asymmetry in the inclination distribution of JTs, with the L4 population being tighter and the L5 population being broader. We also provide a new catalog of the synthetic proper elements for JTs with an updated identification of statistically robust families (9 at L4, and 4 at L5). The previously known Ennomos family is found to consist of two overlapping Deiphobus and Ennomos families.
Journal Article
Weird astronomical theories of the solar system and beyond
After addressing strange cosmological hypotheses in Weird Universe, David Seargent tackles the no-less bizarre theories closer to home. Alternate views on the Solar System's formation, comet composition, and the evolution of life on Earth are only some of the topics he addresses in this new work. Although these ideas exist on the fringe of mainstream astronomy, they can still shed light on the origins of life and the evolution of the planets. Continuing the author's series of books popularizing strange astronomy facts and knowledge, Weird Astronomical Theories presents an approachable exploration of the still mysterious questions about the origin of comets, the pattern of mass extinctions on Earth, and more. The alternative theories discussed here do not come from untrained amateurs. The scientists whose work is covered includes the mid-20th century Russian S.K. Vsekhsvyatskii, cosmologist Max Tegmark, British astronomers Victor Clube and William Napier, and American Tom Van Flandern, a specialist in celestial mechanics who held a variety of unusual beliefs about the possibility of intelligent life having come from elsewhere. Despite being outliers, their work reveals how much astronomical understanding is still evolving. Unconventional approaches have also pushed our scientific understanding for the better, as with R.W. Mandl's approaching Einstein with regard to gravitational lensing. Even without full substantiation (and some theories are hardly credible), their hypotheses allow for a new perspective on how the Solar System became what it is today.
Book
The origin of inner Solar System water
Of the potential volatile sources for the terrestrial planets, the CI and CM carbonaceous chondrites are closest to the planets' bulk H and N isotopic compositions. For the Earth, the addition of approximately 2–4 wt% of CI/CM material to a volatile-depleted proto-Earth can explain the abundances of many of the most volatile elements, although some solar-like material is also required. Two dynamical models of terrestrial planet formation predict that the carbonaceous chondrites formed either in the asteroid belt (‘classical’ model) or in the outer Solar System (5–15 AU in the Grand Tack model). To test these models, at present the H isotopes of water are the most promising indicators of formation location because they should have become increasingly D-rich with distance from the Sun. The estimated initial H isotopic compositions of water accreted by the CI, CM, CR and Tagish Lake carbonaceous chondrites were much more D-poor than measured outer Solar System objects. A similar pattern is seen for N isotopes. The D-poor compositions reflect incomplete re-equilibration with H2 in the inner Solar System, which is also consistent with the O isotopes of chondritic water. On balance, it seems that the carbonaceous chondrites and their water did not form very far out in the disc, almost certainly not beyond the orbit of Saturn when its moons formed (approx. 3–7 AU in the Grand Tack model) and possibly close to where they are found today.
This article is part of the themed issue ‘The origin, history and role of water in the evolution of the inner Solar System’.
Journal Article