The DEPTH of our Solar System

[Zak33]

I heard this data on Radio 4 this am but have been too busy until now to share it with you.

Its good in its own right, BUT it puts our lives into perspective too.

If our Sun, in the centre of our Solar System is represented by an ORANGE, then the Earth is the size of a Pin Head! and is 10metres away from it.

Now that in itself is just mind boggling.....here am I having a cack day at work and I worry about money, and holidays and work stress and PC's and cars and family and friends...

and how warm it is gonna be at the weekend, and the SUN is so much bigger than anything I can comprehand and SO MUCH further away than I ever really appreciated that my mind just froze up for a few moments

But get this......Pluto, until recently the FURTHEST KNOWN planet (loose term apparently, but we'll use it) from the Sun that is orbiting it....

is the size of a grain of sugar, when compared to that ORANGE, and is how far from the Orange?

Well, we are 10 metres.....and Pluto is 1/2 a kilometre!

Now when you consider that we can STUDY that planet to an extent.....and if you think how big your town is, and how big England is....and how big Europe is...and how big Planet Earth is...and thats the relevant size of a pin head...and now think about how many pin heads are in 1/2 a kilometre....

my head is just....destroyed by this all

and of course we now have proof of another in orbit FURTHER away...

unreal..there's me worrying about my shoes rubbing my heels

[Zak33]

according to THIS SITE, http://www.nineplanets.org/pluto.html Pluto is the only planet not visited by a space craft (from earth )

Un blummin real.....I cant guarantee a Vectra will start up after a prolonged spell in a car park, and we have a space craft THAT FAR AWAY IN CONTACT!!!!!

[Zak33]

blimey...July the 1st Cassini gets to Saturn....I'm worried about traffic on the way home

"Cassini, now on its way, will arrive on July 1, 2004."

http://www.nineplanets.org/saturn.html

[Rave]

Actually Zak, I can't remember the specifics, but one (or possibly both) of the Voyager spacecraft stayed in touch after it had passed Neptune and was some way into the Kuiper belt. At that point it had been in space for 15 years or more....

Astronomy is fascinating, but you can literally give yourself brainache if you're not careful!

Rich :¬)

[TeePee]

Welcome to the futility of your existance.

[Sair33]

Tis amazing when you actually stop for a minute and think about it.....

[Auran]

If I remember my Astrophysics it's also not the furthest planet at the moment - due to its eliptical orbit. Will have to check on that tho

[Zak33]

Tis amazing when you actually stop for a minute and think about it.....

Tis amazing I had TIME to stop and think about it today

and another thing.....weirder than it all....

the planets all rotate the same direction and IN THE SAME PLANE within a few degrees of each other...

so none of then circle the sun in a different PLANE to another...

how WEIRD is THAT?

[Auran]

One doesn't rotate - I think that it is Mercury

There is a reason why they are all in a similar plane, but it eludes me. I do remember that wierd things would happen if they didn't ;-)

[Sair33]

There is a reason why they are all in a similar plane, but it eludes me. I do remember that wierd things would happen if they didn't ;-)

Lets just hope they all stay that way then!!!

[Auran]

Just checked - memory is failing me, mercury does rotate but it has an odd rotational/orbital resonance, pluto went outside the orbit of Neptune in late 1999 and it is Venus that rotates the other way.

[Rythmic]

It used to be thought by astromers that mercury didn't rotate - and always (roughly) kept it one side to the sun - but it doesn't - sorry.

The reason they're all roughly in one plane is due to the way the solar system formed - as the matter that makes up the solar system started to rotate and condense, the rotation through some of the matter out into a disc, and the rest into a lump in the middle - the lump became the sun, and the disc coalesced into the planets.

Though quite why this happened - no-one really knows

If you really want to mess with your head, our local galaxy the milky way (what a terrible name...) has around 400 billion stars and is over 100 000 light years across. Light from the sun takes only 8 minutes to reach us - so the galaxy is roughly 6.5 billion times longer if my maths its right.

Until the 1920s it was generally thought to be the entire universe, but oh no... we belong to the "Local Group" which has 3 large and 30 small galaxies - the group is approxiamately 10 milllion light years accross.

Galaxy groups go together in super clusters - roughly 2400 in each. We're in the virgo super cluster

Now the biggy - theres around 10 million superclusters in the visible universe.

thats about 30 billion trillion stars

and thats just what we can see




We are so little fish in a big pond.

[headbrace]

Thats pretty scary stuff there Zakkyboy. WHat I find just as amazing is the fact that on one of the space craft the furthest out, which has been up for about 15 years,NASA realised that there was a fault developing in on of the circuit boards- nowt would be able to be done, you would think? But no, NASA just send it a signal, and after it gets there after a few hours/days, the spacecraft just switches circuit boards, and carries on beaming pictures back to us. Unbelievable

[Kezzer]

I myself love astronomy. Just looking out at the stars is cool enough.

[turkster]

I think it is questionable that Pluto can actually be defined as a planet. It could be a rather large asteriod from the Kuiper belt or something like that.

I love astronomy and astrophysics. I was reading loads of stuff about it last year but there is so many interesting things to do and not enough time to do them
I was actually looking at some of the photos/info on the building of the ESO (European Southern Observatory) telescopes in Chile yesterday. Pretty interesting stuff

Maybe we should have an astronomy forum

[MAS]

Ha, if that messes with your head, you want to brush up on your physics. I can't think about that kind of thing anymore; if I do my head just spins. Unfortunately, it does make life feel pretty futile (for me at least).