ASTR 1P01

SEPT. 7 2023

ASTR LEC 1: Intro

PART 1:
What is astronomy?
- Astronomy studies celestial objects: anything that exists outside of Earth
- This includes objects such as:
o Planets
o Moons
o Asteroids
o Comets
o Stars
o Black holes
o Galaxies
o The entire universe as a whole

Astronomy is a science:
- To understand how astronomy works you first have to understand how science works
- Science is not a body of knowledge, it’s a method for obtaining and verifying knowledge
about our universe
- In science, we make observations and experiments, and use them to crate hypotheses that
try to explain how things work
- Scientific hypotheses have predictions, which need to be tested experimentally
- If an experiment disagrees with a hypothesis, we need to modify or discard the
hypothesis
- If enough experiments agree with the predictions of a hypothesis, then It eventually
becomes an established theory
- “theory” in everyday language means the same thing as “hypothesis” or “speculation”
o But in science theory means a hypothesis that was rigorously tested and verified
- A theory is an accurate explanation of how things work
- Once a hypothesis becomes a theory, we can use it to:
o Understand the universe better – theorists
o Predict the results of future experiments or events – experimentalist
o Create new technologies – applied scientists or engineers
- But its always possible that other experiments in the future will contradict the theory
- Then we will need to find an even better theory
- Science is self correcting, and always moves forward
- Our understanding of nature becomes better and more precise with each new theory
- This process of creating hypotheses and then testing them is called the scientific method
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- One of the most important components of this method is skepticism

- Scientists remain skeptical about any new hypothesis until there is sufficient evidence
supporting it
- Because of skepticism, the scientific method is the only reliable and trustworthy method
of obtaining knowledge
- Scientists don’t trust theories based on belief or faith. We trust theories because we test
them and find evidence for them
- No theory is sacred. If we find any evidence that contradicts a theory we don’t trust it
anymore and try and find a better one
- So anything you learn in this course might turn out to be false in the future
- But that’s a good thing, it means we further improved our understanding of the universe

History:
- Like any other science, astronomy changes constantly
o New theories attempt to explain things we could not explain before
o New instruments allow us to make more precise measurements
- This goes all the way back to the beginning of astronomy
- Ancient astronomers had a model of the universe with the earth at the center
o But with more precise measurements, the predictions of this model failed
- Geocentric model from the 1550s
o Predicted certain things, like where each planet is in the sky at any point in time
and at first they were accurate but after time the predictions became less and less
accurate, and more precise measurements were made with more precise
instruments, model does not give an accurate prediction
o Eventually astronomers realized that the sun was actually in the middle
o Its predictions fit our observations
o We actually now know that the sun is just one of numerous stars and that the
universe actually has no center
The future of astronomy:
- What are dark matter and dark energy?
- What is at the center of a black hole?
- Does life exist on other planets?
- It may take decades or centuries to answer these questions

Astronomical observations:
- Astronomy is different from most sciences because
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o Astronomers cant do experiments in a lab

o Can only observe astronomical objects that are located incredibly far away
o Using instruments like telescopes
- As technology improves these instruments get better and better and allow us ti make
observations in greater detail and different ways
o Ex:
o Light is a type of electromagnetic radiation that humans can use
o But there are other types of radiation such as infrared, xrays, and radio waves,
which we cannot see but can be detected by instruments
o We can observe the sky not only with light telescopes but also with radio
telescopes
o We can place telescopes in outerspace, so we can observe without having the
atmosphere in the way
Prof research:
- General relativity: theory provides a precise description of the force of gravity and
explains how space and time work
- General relativity completely revolutionized astronomy
- It introduced:
o New celestial objects, like black holes
o New tools to probe the sky such as gravitational lensing and gravitational waves
o Helped us understand the origin of our universe in the form of the big bang
(beginning of time)
- More in ASTR 1p02

Light-years and the speed of light:

- In astronomy we often measure distances in a unit called a light-year
- This is the distance light travels during one year
- Even though it has the word “year” in it a light-year is not a unit of time
- When you say 5 mins away you are saying how far away you are…
- No human walks at exactly the same speed all; the time but light always travels at the
same speed, the speed of light
o One of the most important lessons of the theory of relativity
- Light always moves the same distance at the same amount of time and it gets there faster
than anything else so it makes sense to use light-years as a unit of distance
- The speed of light is approximately
o 300,000 km/s
o 1 billion km/h
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- Remember: distance = speed x time

- To calculate how many kilometers are in a light-year, first you need to calculate how
many seconds are in a year
- 1 julian year = 365.25 days
o X 24 hrs in a day
o X 60 minutes per hour
o X 60 seconds per minute
o ~31.6 million seconds
- 1 light-year = (300,000 km/s) x (31,600,000 s)
o = 9,480,000,000,000
o ~ 9.5 trillion km

Common large numbers:

- Thousand 1000 – 3 zeros
- Million 1000000 – 6 zeros
- Billion 1000000000 – 9 zeros
- Trillion 1000000000000 – 12 zeros
- Quadrillion 1000000000000000 – 15 zeros
- Quintillion 1000000000000000000 – 18 zeros
- So 9.5 trillion km means 9.5 x 1000000000000
o If you drive a car at 120km/h it will take you about 9 million years to drive the
distance of 1 light-year
PART 2:
Astronomical distances:
- Astronomical distances are usually much larger than just one light-year
o Ex:
o The orion nebula is 1300 light-years away from earth
o This is 12.5 quadrillion km away
o A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust from which new stars and planets are being
made
- The speed of light is so fast that it traverses short distances almost instantaneously
- So it usually seems to us that it travels infinitely fast
- However, on astronomical scales it can actually take light many years to travel from
place to place
- Since the orion nebula is 1300 light-years away light from it takes 1300 years to reach ys
- When we see the orion nebula in the sky, we see it as it was 1300 years ago, 8th century
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- We will only know what the nebula looks like today when the light emitted from it today
will reach us, 1300 years in the future
- This is quite amazing but it is also very useful, because it means looking up into the sky
is like having a time machine
- The farther away we look the farther into the past we see
- This allows us to see how the universe looked like billions of years in the past if we look
far enough
- We can use that info to reconstruct the history and evolution of our universe

Brief tour of the universe:

- Earth:
o Approx. spherical, diameter around 13,000km
o Only astronomical object that we know contains life so far
- Moon:
o Only celestial body that humans have visited in person
o Approx.. spherical diameter around 3500km
o Located an av. Distance 384,000km from earth
o Close but far enough that light takes 1.3 seconds to travel that distance
 This caused a noticeable delay when astronauts communicated with earth
- Sun:
o A star – huge ball of gas that generates energy and light by nuclear reactions
- Proxima centaur:
o 4,2 light-years or 40 trillion km away
o Next closest star after the sun
- Including the earth there are 8 planets that revolve around the sun
1. Mercury
2. Venus
3. Earth
4. Mars
5. Jupiter
6. Saturn
7. Uranus
8. Neptune
o Planets and moons don’t generate their own light but they reflect the suns light
- Galaxies are enormous collections of between 100 million to 100 trillion stars
o Each one like our sun, some bigger and smaller in different spaces, different life
spans
o Between those stars is interstellar gas and dust known as the interstellar medium
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- We are located in the milky way galaxy which contains 100-400 billion stars including
our sun
o Its 100,000 to 200,000 light-years wide and 1000 light-years thick
- Since we are inside of the galaxy we don’t know what it looks like from the outside, but
we think it’s a barred spiral galaxy, which means it might look like thus galaxy, NGC
1073
- NDC 1073 is located inside a spiral arm called the Orion arm
- The sun is 25000-29000 light-years from the center of the galaxy
- It takes the sun 220-250 million years to orbit the center of the galaxy at around 230km/s
- At the centre of the galaxy there is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*
- A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape it, not
even light
- Sagittarius A* has the mass of 4 million suns
- Most galaxies have similar supermassive black holes at their centers
- Each galaxy (so many) contains billions or trillions of stars
- More galaxies are discovered all the time
- There are small galaxies close to the milky way, but the nearest large galaxy is
Andromeda
o 2.5 million light-years away
o Also has a new small satellite galaxies
- The local group:
o The milky way, andromeda, and a least 80 smaller galaxies form the local group
o The local group is 10 million light-years in diameter
o Is itself part of the virgo supercluster, 110 light-years in diameter
- The virgo supercluster:
o Contains at least 100 galaxy groups and clusters
o Part of the laniakea supercluster
- Laniakea supercluster:
o Contains more than 100,000 galaxies and has a diameter of 520 million light-
years
- The most distant galaxy as of sept of 2022 is GN-z11 at 32 billion light years away
- Around 13.8 billion years ago at the ‘big bang’ the universe began to expand from a hot
and dense state
o As it expanded it became colder and less dense
o Eventually it reached a state where stars and planets could be formed

The Big Bang:

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- Despite its name the big bang wasn’t an ‘explosion’ it was just the time when the
expansion of the universe started
- The universe has been expanding ever since, and could keep expanding forever
- The universe isn’t expanding ‘into’ anything but instead distances become longer
- Lots of misconceptions

- The oldest thing we can see in the universe is the cosmic microwave background

o This is electromagnetic radiation that was emitted only 380,000 years after the
Big Bang
- Everything described so far is part of the observable universe – what we can observe
from earth
- The observable universe is a sphere with a diameter of 93 billion light-years

The observable universe:

- The reason we canr see anything beyond the edge of the observable universe isn’t that
there’s something in the way, or that our telescopes aren’t good enough
o it’s because light takes time to travel!
o Objects outside the observable universe are so far away that the light from them
has not had time to reach us yet
- The ‘edge’ of the observable universe is an imaginary line beyond which light cannot get
to us
o There is no actual edge to the universe
- Aliens in a far away galaxy will see a different observable universe, with its edge at a
different place
- The aliens will see themselves at the center of their sphere
- The size of the wole universe, including the parts that are not observable (but still exist)
is unknown, and could potentially be infinite
- The universe is 13.8 billion years old and te edge of the observable universe is 46.5
billion light-years away
- But if light travels at the rate of 1 light-year per year, then light could only have travelled
13.8 billion light years since the big bang
- How can this be?:
o The reason for this discrepancy is that the universe is expanding
o The galaxies that are currently at the edge of the observable universe used to be
much closer to us, but the distance to those galaxies expanded with time
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Powers of 10:
- 10^n where n is any positive integer means 1 followed by n zeros
- Thousand = 10^3
- Million = 10^6
- Billion = 10^9 etc.
- Multiplying two powers of 10:
o 10^n x 10^m = 10^n+m
 Ex: 10^3 x 10^9 = 10^12
 Thousand x billion = trillion

Scientific notation:
- Scientific notation is used to write very large numbers
- It’s always a number time a power of 10
o Ex:
o 2.3 x 10^6 = 2.3 x 1,000,000 = 2,300,000
o 4.7 x 10^12 = 4.7 x 1,000,000,000,000 = 4,700,000,000,000
- Multiplying in scientific notation:
o (a x 10^n) x (b x 10^m) = (a x b) x 10^n+m
o Ex:
o (1.5 x 10^3) x (3.0 x 10^6) = 4.5 x 10^9
o Because 1.5 x 3.0 = 4.5

PART 3:
Calculating the size of the observable universe:
ly = light-year
Size = 93 billion, ly = 93 x 10^9 ly
1 ly = 9.5 trillion km = 9.5 x 10^12 km
Calculating size in km
Size = (93 x 10^9 ly) x (9.5 x 10^12 km/ly) = 883.5 x 10^21 km
But 883.5 is almost 100 which is 10^3 so…
Size of the observable universe ~ 10^3 x 10^21 = 10^24 km =
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
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The smallest things in the universe:

- More math: negative powers of 10
o 10^-n where n is any positive integer means 1 divided by 10^n
 10^-n = 1/10n
o 10^-n can also be written as n zeros followed by a 1 with a decimal point after the
first zero (like an inverted 10^n)
 Thousandth: 10^-3 – 1/1000 = 0.001
 Millionth: 10^-6 = 1/1,000,000 = 0.00001
 Billionth: 10^-9 = 1/1,000,000,000 = 0.000000001
- Most things we can see or detect like stars planets and humans, are made of atoms
- Every atom is composed of a nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons
- The nucleus itself is made of protons and neutrons, each of which is around 100,000
times smaller than an atom

Atomic scales:
- Size of an atom: 10^-10 m = 0.0000000001 m
- Size of a nucleus: 10^-15 m = 0.000000000000001 m
- Size of a proton or neutron: just a bit smaller than the nucleus
- Electrons don’t orbit the nucleus, they’re ‘probability clouds’ – quantum mechanics

Elements:
- There are 118 different types of atoms that we know of, also called chemical elements
- All atomic matter in the universe is made of different combinations of these 118 elements
- The number of protons, known. As the atomic number, determines the type of chemical
element
- Hydrogen has 1 proton, helium has 2 protons, and so on
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Abundance of elements:
- Hydrogen (1 proton) is the most common element, it makes up 74% of atomic matter
- Helium (2 protons) makes up 24% of atomic matter
- The other 116 elements make up the remaining 2%
- Some matter is made up of molecules which are groups of two or more atoms bonded
together
o Ex: water is made of water molecules, which consist of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1
oxygen atom

Elementary particles:
- The protons and neutrons in the nucleus are made of particles called up and down quarks
Ex:
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proton:2 up quarks, 1 down quark

neutron: 1 up quark, 2 down quarks

- So all atomic matter in the universe is actually made of just 3 kinds of particles:
1. Electrons
2. Up quarks
3. Down quarks
- As far as we know electrons and quarks are not made of any smaller particles, which is
why we call them elementary particles
- Another common elementary particle is the photon: the particle of light and
electromagnetic radiation
- There are more ‘exotic’ elementary particles – won’t learn right now

Subatomic scales
- The sizes of elementary particles are unknown and hard to define, since in quantum
mechanics small things are ‘fuzzy’
- They might just be points with no size
- Quark: less than 10^-19 m = 0.0000000000000000001 m
- Electron: less than 10^-22 m = 0.0000000000000000000001 m

From smallest to largest scales:

- Smallest thing: electron: less than 10^-22 m
- Largest thing: observable universe: 10^24 km = 10^27 m
- Difference: 49 orders of magnitude (powers of 10)

Human scales:

- Humans: around the middle at approx.. 1 = 10^0 m

o 27 orders of magnitude smaller than the observable universe – completely
negligible
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o 22 orders of magnitude larger than an electron

- The furthest from earth humans have been is the moon, around 380000km = 3.8 x 10^8
away
- That is like moving 1 atom away if the observable universe was the size of the earth
- We have a long way to go
- Where can we go
- We’ve sent probes to other places in the solar system, planets, moons, asteroids, but not
humans
- Human missions to the moon took 3-4 days
- We want to send humans to mars – this will take several months
- Closest star – proxima centauri, 4.2 light-years or 4 x 10^13 km away
- Fastest human-made spaceship: NASA’s parker solar probe, expected to reach
690000km/h
o Only still 0.06% of the speed of light
- Traveling to proxima centauir at that speed will still take 6500 years
- The andromeda galaxy is located 2.5 million light-years away
o At 690000km/h it would take 4 billion years to reach it
o Even if could travel close to the speed of light, it would still take at least 2.5
million years to travel to andromeda,
 there is no way to travel faster than light
- human will never be able to travel to andromeda with any conceivable technology
- we are forever stuck in the milky way galaxy

Time scales:
- the universe is 13.8 billion years old
- modern humans evolved from earlier hominid species around 300000 years ago
o this is around 20000 times shorter than the age of the universe
- the recorded history of humanity only began around 5000 years ago
o roughly 3 million times shorter than the age of the universe
- *there are 31.6 million seconds in a year
- If the universe only existed for one year then
o Human only existed for the last 25 mins of that year
o All of recorded history has only existed for the last 10 secs of that year
- So if the big bang took place on midnight onn jan 1st then
o Humanity only appeared on Dec 31 at 23:35
o Recorded human history only started at 23:59:50

Reading: openstax astronomy chap 1 and appendices A-D

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Exercises: practice questions will be posted on teams