Waves in the Universe Size, distance, & light C = 186,000 miles per sec

Waves in the Universe

Size, distance, & light

C = 186,000 miles per sec

Light is a wave

The Inner planets (plus Pluto)

Earth’s Moon is about the same size as Mars.

The Moon is 250,000 miles from Earth. Light takes 1.2 sec to travel from the Moon to the Earth.Light takes 8.5 minutes to travel from Sun to the Earth.

The 6' Earth globe in Abrams Planetarium lobbyMichigan State University, East Lansing, MI

Where is Pluto?

• Start at Lansing, Michigan.

• Calculate the distances to the other planets “to scale”.

• Where would Pluto be?

Jupiter - in Detroit

Saturn - in Chicago

Uranus - in Pittsburgh

Neptune - Wash, DC

Pluto - Cape Cod

Alpha Centauri -145 times around the world!

Pluto is 3660 million miles from the Sun. (Charon and Sun - artist’s idea)

Light takes 5 hr 40 min, Sun to Pluto.

Nearest star…. Alpha CentauriLight takes 4.3 years to get from AC to Pluto!

Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky. It is more than 1000 light years away.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way. Light takes 100,00 years to cross the galaxy.

About 3,000 Galaxies in a small patch of the sky.Light travels 5,900,000,000,000 miles in a year… called a Light Year.

70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (7X1022) 70 Sextillion!!That is10 times as many stars as there are grains of sand on all the world's beaches and deserts put together.

Our closest start is about four light years away (23,462,784,000,000 miles) The edge of the universe? About 15 billion light years

To fly to the Moon at a constant speed of 1000 km/hr, takes sixteen daysThe Sun happens to be 400 times the Moon's diameter, and 400 times as far away.