Intro Astronomy Class 1: Tour of the Solar System

Posted by Bruce Betts

11-02-2014 17:53 CST

Topics: Enceladus, Titan, Saturn's moons, Saturn, Saturn's rings, Jupiter's moons, Jupiter's rings, Io, Europa, Pluto, Ganymede, Eris, Callisto, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Phobos, Deimos, Jupiter, Mercury, the Sun, near-Earth asteroids, trans-neptunian objects, comets, Earth impact hazard, asteroids, Triton, Neptune, Neptune's moons, explaining science, impact cratering, Uranus, Uranus' moons

In my first class of my Introduction to Planetary Science and Astronomy class at California State University Dominguez Hills, I took students on a tour of the solar system.  Come fly with me in the video below.  For more information about the class, see my class page, http://planetary.org/bettsclass

After some introductory information about the class, we started at the Sun, then moved out through the solar system, with overviews of Mercury, Venus, the Earth Moon system, Mars, near Earth asteroids and the asteroid belt, the Jupiter system including its large Galilean satellites, the Saturn system including its rings and moons, the Uranian system, the Neptunian system, trans Neptunian objects including Pluto and Eris, and comets.  For each, I tried to orient students to the sizes involved, particularly relative sizes and distances. I also gave overviews of the exploration history of each body and started discussion of some of the key solar system processes that have shaped worlds, such as impact cratering.

In the next class, I will talk about how we explore space including the electromagnetic spectrum and telescopes, as well as some easy things you can see in the night sky.

Other related posts:

Watch Ceres rotate: A guide to interpreting Dawn's images

Understanding why our most Earth-like neighbor, Venus, is so different

Pluto Science, on the Surface

Or read more blog entries about: Enceladus, Titan, Saturn's moons, Saturn, Saturn's rings, Jupiter's moons, Jupiter's rings, Io, Europa, Pluto, Ganymede, Eris, Callisto, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Phobos, Deimos, Jupiter, Mercury, the Sun, near-Earth asteroids, trans-neptunian objects, comets, Earth impact hazard, asteroids, Triton, Neptune, Neptune's moons, explaining science, impact cratering, Uranus, Uranus' moons