MSED 252 Earth Science Blog

 Back before we had all the key elements to such as satellites and cameras Scientists would have to find ways to see the planets, moon, and stars without this technology. This is how we are now able to have the technology to see earth and space and it is because of the Scientists a long time ago that discovered what was needed. Back in the day during the time of Kepler and Galileo the huge discussion topic did the earth rotates around the sun or does the sun go around the earth. This was a large discussion on this topic we had a famous millionaire at the time by the name of Tycho Brahe who created a database that was able to predict many key concepts in our solar system. He believed in a geocentric model or sun evolves around the earth. While Kepler believed in a Heliocentric model or sun-centered model. While they both created evidence to support their claim Kepler had the right idea but could not interpret parallax for his model so the geocentric model was still the best model until

                                                          The length of our Solar System Over this week we found a way to put the distance between objects in our Solar system into perspective by using a different scale to walk out the distance between each planet and the sun. For this example, we chose to scale down miles into meters and this still was a very long distance between everything in our solar system, and when we got to the very end we could not see the sun from the end of the last planet. We used this as a comparison to show just how large our solar system is and how to put the distance into a perspective we can understand.  Below is a small chart that shows the distance between our sun and the planets around it. The AU stands for astronomical units is 149.6 Million Kilometers so our planets are spaced out a lot from one another.  Since we now know the distance between our planets we have a few people to thank for it. Christiaan Huygens was the first one to measure the dist

                                                         Solar system  Over this until we discussed a lot about the Solar system and all of the parts that are part of our solar system. Also, that there is so much unexplored area outside of our own solar system. We use to believe that our Earth was the center of the universe yet we are only a small part of the infinite universe.  Below is an image of our very own solar system. While learning about our solar system we found the many different characteristics that each planet has such as Saturn having a ring around the planet or Jupiter being the largest planet in our own solar system.  During my next blog, I will be describing more about our solar system and just how far each of these planets is from each other.