Life in the Universe (4th Edition)
4th Edition
ISBN: 9780134089089
Author: Jeffrey O. Bennett, Seth Shostak
Publisher: PEARSON
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Chapter 3, Problem 59IF
To determine
Evaluate the distance between the Sun to Alpha Centauri and the Sun itself on the
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1. A distant galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 10 and is 4,000 kpc away. What is its absolute magnitude? (Round your answer to at least one decimal place.)
The difference in absolute magnitude between two objects viewed from the same distance is related to their fluxes by the flux-magnitude relation.
FA/FB= 2.51(MB − MA)
2. How does the absolute magnitude of this galaxy compare to the Milky Way
(M = −21)?
As we discussed, clouds are made of a great many small drops. Really - a great many. Imagine a
liquid cloud that fills a volume of 1 km3. The clouds contains 100 drops per cubic centimeter; for
the sake of argument assume that each is 10 microns (micrometers) in radius.
A. How many drops does the cloud contain? Compare this to a big number - say, the number of
stars in the galaxy.
B. What mass of water does the cloud contain? Compare this to something big - elephants,
trucks, that sort of thing.
C. What fraction of the cloud volume is filled with condensed water? One way to approach this
is to compare the density of the suspended liquid water to the density of the surrounding air.
D. How many 1 mm drizzle drops could you make from all the cloud drops?
E. How much energy was released when this water condensed from vapor to liquid? If the
water condensed in 20 minutes (a reasonable lifetime for a small cloud), what was the
(energy per time)?
power
The disk of the Milky Way galaxy contains roughly 200 billion (1 billion = 109 ) stars. The disk is not solid, but rather is a volume about 100,000 light-years in diameter (1 ly = 9500 billion kilometers) and 1000 light-years in thickness. What is the number density of stars in the Milky Way galaxy disk, in units of stars per cubic light-year? How about in units of stars per cubic km?
Chapter 3 Solutions
Life in the Universe (4th Edition)
Ch. 3 - List three major ideas of astronomy that help...Ch. 3 - Briefly define and describe each of the various...Ch. 3 - Describe the solar system as it looks on the...Ch. 3 - Prob. 4RQCh. 3 - Prob. 5RQCh. 3 - Prob. 6RQCh. 3 - Prob. 7RQCh. 3 - What do we mean when we say that Earth and life...Ch. 3 - Imagine describing the cosmic calendar to a...Ch. 3 - Prob. 10RQ
Ch. 3 - Prob. 11RQCh. 3 - Prob. 12RQCh. 3 - What is the difference between matter in the...Ch. 3 - Define and give examples of kinetic energy,...Ch. 3 - Prob. 15RQCh. 3 - Prob. 16RQCh. 3 - Briefly describe the four major features of our...Ch. 3 - Briefly describe the nebular theory and how it...Ch. 3 - What was the close encounter hypothesis for our...Ch. 3 - How have recent discoveries led scientists to...Ch. 3 - Prob. 21TYUCh. 3 - At a middle school talent show, 14-year-old Sam...Ch. 3 - SETI researchers announced today that if they...Ch. 3 - A noted physicist today announced that he has...Ch. 3 - Prob. 25TYUCh. 3 - Astronomers have discovered a galaxy in the far...Ch. 3 - Inventor John Johnson has patented a device that...Ch. 3 - Prob. 28TYUCh. 3 - Prob. 29TYUCh. 3 - Using new, powerful telescopes, biologists today...Ch. 3 - Prob. 31TYUCh. 3 - Prob. 32TYUCh. 3 - A television advertisement claiming that a product...Ch. 3 - When we say the universe is expanding, we mean...Ch. 3 - Prob. 35TYUCh. 3 - The age of our solar system is about (a) one-third...Ch. 3 - Prob. 37TYUCh. 3 - How many of the planets orbit the Sun in the same...Ch. 3 - Prob. 39TYUCh. 3 - Prob. 40TYUCh. 3 - Explaining the Past. Is it really possible for...Ch. 3 - A Strange Star System. Suppose that we discovered...Ch. 3 - Prob. 44IFCh. 3 - Alien Technology. Some people believe that Earth...Ch. 3 - Atomic Terminology Practice. a. The most common...Ch. 3 - Prob. 49IFCh. 3 - Prob. 50IFCh. 3 - Patterns of Motion. In one or two paragraphs,...Ch. 3 - Two Kinds of Planets. The jovian planets differ...Ch. 3 - Pluto and Eris. How does the nebular theory...Ch. 3 - Rocks from Other Solar Systems. Many leftovers...Ch. 3 - Prob. 55IFCh. 3 - Prob. 56IFCh. 3 - Scale of the Solar System. The real diameters of...Ch. 3 - Prob. 58IFCh. 3 - Prob. 59IFCh. 3 - Prob. 60IFCh. 3 - Prob. 61IFCh. 3 - Prob. 62IFCh. 3 - Prob. 63IFCh. 3 - Prob. 67WPCh. 3 - Tour of the Solar System. Visit one of the many...
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- Try Now ... .... Listed below are some distances from Earth to other objects in the Milky Way galaxy. Convert each distance to light-years. (Each of these distances is less than one light-year. For an added challenge, convert each distance to light minutes or light seconds.) 1. The distance from Earth to the Moon is about 384,400 km. How many light-years is this? 2. The distance from Earth to Mars is about 784,000,000 km. How many light-years is this? 3. The distance from Earth to Pluto is about 5,750,000,000 km. How many light-years is this?arrow_forwardOur galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter and 2,000 light years thick through the plane of the galaxy. If we were to compare the ratio of the diameter galaxy and its thickness to the ratio of the diameter of a CD and its thickness (CD has a diameter of 12 cm and thickness of 0.6 mm), what would be the factor differentiating those ratios? Put differently, if the galaxy were scaled down to the diameter of a CD, how many times thicker or thinner would the galaxy be than the CD? (For example if it would be twice as thick, you would answer 2 and if it were twice as thin you would answer 0.5 (aka 1/2))arrow_forwardThe best parallaxes obtained with Hipparcos have an accuracy of 0.001 arcsec. If you want to measure the distance to a star with an accuracy of 10%, its parallax must be 10 times larger than the typical error. How far away can you obtain a distance that is accurate to 10% with Hipparcos data? The disk of our Galaxy is 100,000 light-years in diameter. What fraction of the diameter of the Galaxy’s disk is the distance for which we can measure accurate parallaxes?arrow_forward
- What evidence contradicts the top-down hypothesis for the origin of our Galaxy?arrow_forwardThe Tully-Fischer method relies on being able to relate the mass of a galaxy to its rotation velocity. Stars in the outer-most regions of the Milky Way galaxy, located at a distance of 50 kpc from the galactic centre, are observed to orbit at a speed vrot determine the mass in the Milky Way that lies interior to 50 kpc. Express your answer in units of the Solar mass. 250 km s-1. Using Kepler's 3rd Law,arrow_forwardEstimating the mass of the Milky Way a) Assuming the Sun moves in a circular orbit of radius 8 kiloparsecs around the center of the Milky Way, and that its orbital speed is 220 km/s, calculate how many years it takes the Sun to complete one orbit of the Galaxy. Remember to convert kiloparsecs to kilometers. b) Using the modified form of Kepler's third law (introduced in Lecture 13, for measuring the combined masses of binary stars), R³ m+ M = estimate the mass of the Milky Way enclosed within 8 kpc (Sun's orbit radius). The mass of the Milky Way inside p² I the Sun's orbit can be represented as a single mass (M) located at its center, and the mass of the Sun (m) can be considered infinitesimally small compared to the Milky Way's (i.e., m < M). c) Is this estimate of the Milky Way's mass an upper or lower limit? Explain your reasoning.arrow_forward
- White Dwarf Size II. The white dwarf, Sirius B, contains 0.98 solar mass, and its density is about 2 x 106 g/cm?. Find the radius of the white dwarf in km to three significant digits. (Hint: Density = mass/volume, and the volume of a 4 sphere is Tr.) 3 km Compare your answer with the radii of the planets listed in the Table A-10. Which planet is this white dwarf is closely equal to in size? I Table A-10 I Properties of the Planets ORBITAL PROPERTIES Semimajor Axis (a) Orbital Period (P) Average Orbital Velocity (km/s) Orbital Inclination Planet (AU) (106 km) (v) (days) Eccentricity to Ecliptic Mercury 0.387 57.9 0.241 88.0 47.9 0.206 7.0° Venus 0.723 108 0.615 224.7 35.0 0.007 3.4° Earth 1.00 150 1.00 365.3 29.8 0.017 Mars 1.52 228 1.88 687.0 24.1 0.093 1.8° Jupiter 5.20 779 11.9 4332 13.1 0.049 1.30 Saturn 9.58 1433 29.5 10,759 9.7 0.056 2.5° 30,799 60,190 Uranus 19.23 2877 84.3 6.8 0.044 0.8° Neptune * By definition. 30.10 4503 164.8 5.4 0.011 1.8° PHYSICAL PROPERTIES (Earth = e)…arrow_forwardA given star orbits the center of its galaxy at an average speed of v_star, at a distance of r_star from the center. The galaxy has 2 spiral arms, and the arms themselves orbit slower than the star -- at the same radius, they orbit at a speed of v_arm (in the same direction as the star). The galaxy's age is t_gal. In the history of this galaxy, how many times did this star cross through a spiral arm? Values: v_star = 200 km/s, r_star = 9 kpc, v_arms = 46 km/s, t_gal = 4 Gyrarrow_forwardgiven: a (distance to center of galaxy in AU) = 1,717,914,439 AU P (suns orbital period in years) = 203,782,828.3 years M (mass of milky way galaxy in solar masses) = 1.22 x 10^11 Msun Question: Assume the Milky Way Galaxy is made up entirely of stars like the Sun, i.e. on average each star has the mass of 1 MSun. Under this assumption, approximately how many stars are there in our galaxy? Express this answer in billions of stars (1 billion = 109).arrow_forward
- The figure below shows the spectra of two galaxies A and B. Please can i get help with this questions below: 1. Which of these galaxies has ongoing star formation? How can you tell?2. One of these galaxies has Hubble type E3 while the other is SBb. Which is which? What does the 3 inE3 tell you about the galaxy? What does the SB in SBb tell you about the galaxy?3. What effects would dust have on the two spectra?4. Which galaxy would you expect to have more far-infrared emission? Explarrow_forwardWhich of the following statements best describes our galaxy, the Milky Way? O A bulge dominated system, with little or no disk, approximately 27,000 light years across. A disk 100,000 lightyears across filled with gas and stars, with a bulge of older stars in the galaxy centre. A disk 27,000 light years across with a bulge of gas and newly formed stars in the galaxy centre. O A spherical (elliptical) galaxy, 100,000 lightyears across, with no gas and no new stars.arrow_forwardLet us assume that our galaxy consists of 2.5 × 1011 stars each of one solar mass. How long will a star at a distance of 50,000 ly from the galactic centre take to complete one revolution ? Take the diameter of the Milky Way to be 105 light year.arrow_forward
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