The orbit of Jupiter protects the Earth from asteroids.
a silent guardian, a watchful protector
lol look at mercury go that wild bastard
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part of me is like ‘why don’t we have more funding for looking for asteroids in the apollo belt bc it crosses earths orbit’
but another part of me is like ‘bro fuck it let us die i rly don’t care anymore tbh earth is the punishment orb’
Anonymous asked:
But having cleared its orbit of debris isn't an all or nothing criterium for planets, isn't it? After all Jupiter has not completely cleared its orbit either
Cleared orbit of debris and is the dominant thing in its orbit. Pluto and it’s moon actually orbit each other because the mass of it’s moon perturbs Pluto so much that their center of gravity is somewhere between Pluto and it’s moon
Anonymous asked:
So wait pluto has to make a full orbit around the sun to be considered a planet? At least has to be observed doing that? So if it does that would it then be classed as a planet or no? (Sorry if this sounds stupid! I have trouble understanding things sometimes!)
No it means that it’s in the Kuiper belt and shares it’s orbit with asteroids and other planetesimals
Jupiter and the Galilean moons #astronomy #jupiter
Photos of Jupiter taken by NASA’s JUNO probe
God I’m so gay for Jupiter
Where in the Earth would you be the heaviest?
Standing on the surface of Earth, or in orbit around the Earth, to a first approximation the gravity of the planet is no different whether the planet has a lot of mass right at the center or has mass evenly distributed throughout, or has all its mass right at the surface. However, if you moved down through the planet, the gravity will change. If all Earth’s mass was at the center, you’d find that gravity increased as you approached the center, then dropped right as you reached it. If most of Earth’s mass was near the surface, you’d find gravity gradually decreased as you moved towards the center.
Anonymous asked:
Space mom, do stars die? If so, what happens when they die? Have stars in our galaxy died and been noticed?
Yes! When stars die, they expand into massive red giants. Our own sun will do this in about 5 billion years, I believe? And when it does, the sun will expand to about where earth’s orbit is! After that, it ejects all of its outer layers into space (creating stellar nurseries for the next generation of stars). All that remains of the star is a White Dwarf. They are extremely small and dense.
When massive stars die, because of gravity and other physics, they actually explode into supernovae. We’ve recoded a bunch of these! We actually use them as a means to measure distances because supernovae (rather a specific subtype of supernovae) always have the same luminosity, so by measuring how bright a supernova was to us, we can tell the distance from it.
As a fun aside, due to the composition of our own star, it’s thought to be a 3rd generation star!
Congratulations on another successful orbit around the sun, people of earth
