Playing is Learning
Types of Celestial Bodies
October 11th, 2016
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Welcome to the World of PROFESsee™by seeCOSM™ PROFESsee™ is my title. I am the perpetual learner, in pursuit of knowledge, wisdom and truth. I derived my name from professor |
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Beyond the skies, there’s a sparse world that humans have only scratched the surface of. The Sun, stars and moon that we see from afar are only a small fraction of the celestial bodies that make up the universe. Our search for life other than the one on earth continues to drive our space escapades. It always seems as if the more we know, the clearer it is that we know nothing. But alas, we are still searching. I wonder how long it will take humans to canvass the universe. I had heard from a little birdie that the universe has roughly 100 billion galaxies (huh?), and each galaxy can have up to 100 trillion stars (Good luck with that NASA). Our own Earth belongs to the Milky Way. One of the most intriguing thing is the way astronomers and space enthusiasts give names to celestial bodies – milky way, light years, Galactic center, Orion Arm, black hole, dark matter – an obvious ploy to sound so Sci-Fi. Well, what do I know? I do know that some galaxies decide to gravitate towards one another, and form a “band” – The Cluster of Galaxies. They usually have between a hundred and thousand galaxies coming together to sing "Astronomy Domine" by Pink Floyd. The earth that we live in, is classified as a planet. Planets revolve around the sun, have enough mass to be compressed into a spherical shape by gravity, and should have cleared other celestial bodies from its orbital neighborhood except for the planet’s satellite. I am sure you remember being taught that 9 planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto Uranus and Neptune) revolve around the sun. Well, you will have to erase that notion based on the criteria above. Pluto missed the cut, and to rub salts into injury, it is designated as a dwarf planet. Ouch! Now we have 8 planets revolving around the sun. Speaking of dwarf planets, dwarf planets are celestial bodies that meet only the first two criteria. Pluto’s orbit – the Kuiper Belt for example has 43 other objects known as Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO). The 43 known KBOs (such as Haumea, Eris, Sedna and Quaoar) are merely a drop in the ocean of KBOs. If Pluto hadn’t been bounced from the planet list, then these 43 KBOs automatically become planets too. These are other celestial bodies in orbit around the sun, and are not classified as planets. Examples include asteroids, meteors (aka shooting stars or falling stars) and satellites (moons). Perhaps, of all the celestial bodies, it is the stars that humans are most fascinated with. Isn’t it amazing that some of the little stars (remember twinkle, twinkle little star?) we see at night - the wonderful luminous distant stars – are 1500 times larger than our Sun? Did I hear you say, “What!?” Yes, some of them are that large. What makes them seem small is their distance from the earth. As humans try to answer the enduring question of “Are we alone? Are alien forms out there?” – Our search into space will continue to give us deeper insights into celestial bodies and their relation to the origin of creation. And hopefully, the answer we get is one we can handle. Can you Identify the Celestial Body? Image courtesy of: https://openclipart.org/detail/228411/celestial-bodies |
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