Introduction to the Solar System: Crash Course Astronomy #9
In today's Crash Course Astronomy, Phil takes a look at the explosive history of our cosmic backyard. We explore how we went from a giant ball of gas to the system of planets and other celestial...
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The Solar System is the name we give to our local cosmic backyard. A better way to think of it is all the stuff held sway by the Sun’s gravity: The Sun itself, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, dust, and very thin gas. If you took a step back — well, a few trillion steps back — and looked at it from the outside, you might define the solar system as: the Sun. That’s because the Sun comprises more than 98% of the mass of the entire solar system. The next most massive object, Jupiter, is only 1/10th the diameter and less than 1% the mass of the Sun. But that’s a little unfair. Our solar system is a pretty amazing place, and you can figure out a lot of what’s going on in it just by looking at it. For thousands of years we had to explore the sol...
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The Solar System is the name we give to our local cosmic backyard. A better way to think of it is all the stuff held sway by the Sun’s gravity: The Sun itself, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, dust, and very thin gas. If you took a step back — well, a few trillion steps back — and looked at it from the outside, you might define the solar system as: the Sun. That’s because the Sun comprises more than 98% of the mass of the entire solar system. The next most massive object, Jupiter, is only 1/10th the diameter and less than 1% the mass of the Sun. But that’s a little unfair. Our solar system is a pretty amazing place, and you can figure out a lot of what’s going on in it just by looking at it. For thousands of years we had to explore the sol...
