Week 5: Stars, Galaxies, and Origin of our Solar System

Week 5: Stars, Galaxies, and Origin of our Solar System

1. What did we do in lab today? In lab today we listened to group presentations on galaxies, black holes, and meteroids/comerts/meteroids/craters. While groups presented we were to be taking notes as a handful of the questions from the groups will be on the quiz next week.

2. What was the big question? The big question presented by Ted at the beginning of lab was if today was the first day of fall (September 22nd) where is the sun and where would your shadow be if you were standing on the equator. I wrote that the sun is on the equator because if it was winter it would be on the tropic of Capricorn and if it was summer it would be closer to the tropic of Cancer. If we were standing on the equator at noon our shadow would be non-existent since the sun in shining directly on top of us. If we look at it from an Iowa point of view our shadow would be to the north because the sun is south.

3. What did you learn in Thursday's lecture? I learned that stellar nebula is a bunch of gas that turns into an average size star then becomes a red giant. The analogy was when you burn wood the wood burns up and the fire gets smaller → when the sun which is held together by its mass it loses heat, light and energy it loses mass. As gravity gets less it inflates in size, mass decreases, gravity decreases, it inflates.

Textbook: 

1. What did you learn? I learned that a black hole is an area in space where there is so much strong gravity no light can escape. That is why the area appears black when looking at the few photographs there are. The ring surrounding that hole is glowing gas in space. The holes mass is almost 7 billion times larger than the mass of the sun. 

2. What was most helpful? The video What is a black hole? helped me understand that there really is no comparison to how strong the gravity in black holes. There was a term used "spagetification" which showed an example of a space craft getting close to the hole and how it would stretched out and then disappear.

3. What do you need more information on? No so much do I have a question about the the life cycle of stars I just find it confusing. I am going to watch videos on Youtube to better understand the process. 

1. What questions, concerns, and/or comments do you have? Comment - I have never heard the name Katie Bouman and what she did (and her team) is insane. It is sad that she isn't more known. I rather have her on my Tik Tok than other stuff thats on the news.

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