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

 

  1. What did you do in lab today?

    1. Today in lab, we started out by all sharing our presentations. My group's presentation was on black holes. The other presentations were on life cycles of stars, galaxies, meteors, meteorites, and craters, and our solar system. 

  2. What was the big question?

    1. What are the life cycles of stars, galaxies, black holes, and inner and outer planets? 

  3. What did you learn in Thursday’s discussion?

    1. When our sun turned on, it likely blew all of the gases off the inner four planets 

    2. Red giants burn fuel and lose mass, therefore increasing in size due to less mass 

    3. Three primary shapes of galaxies

      1. Spiral 

        1. The Milky Way 

      2. Elliptical

      3. Irregular 

    4. There are over 2 trillion galaxies 

    5. Black holes are the center of galaxies 

    6. There are 143 known moons surrounding the outer planets

  4. Read chapter 5 of the online textbook.

    1. What did you learn?

      1. I learned that Hayley’s comet has a return date predicted for the middle of the year in 2061. A meteor shower occurs when Earth passes through debris left by a comet.  The vast majority of asteroids can be found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. I did not realize that the average distance between asteroids is 600,000 miles. That seems like a huge distance between them. Most galaxies have a black hole at the center with an extremely strong gravitational pull that holds the whole galaxy together. 

    2. What was most helpful?

      1. I found this chapter to be helpful as a continuation of what our peers taught us in lab. It was a good refresher and also provided some information that was not covered in their presentations. 

    3. What do you need more information on?

      1. Black holes are still a little confusing to me. I had them for my presentation, but after doing research and reading the textbook, I would love to learn more about them. 

  5. What questions, concerns, and/or comments do you have?

    1. I do not have any questions, concerns, and/or comments after this week’s lab and lecture.

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