Transcript Earth’s moon - North Las Vegas

Coulter
The moon’s surface
Features on the moon’s surface include Maria,
craters, and highlands.
Maria
• Dark flat spaces on the moon, Galileo called
MARIA (Latin for seas).
• Galileo thought they were oceans (incorrect).
• The Maria are hardened rock formed from
huge lava flows that occurred between 3 and 4
billion years ago.
Craters
• Galileo saw the surface was marked by large
round pits (craters)
• For a long time scientists thought these
craters were made by volcanoes, but now
know that they are caused by Meteoroids
(chunks of rock or dust from space).
• The Maria have few craters indicating that
most of them were caused early in the moon’s
history, before the Maria formed.
Highlands
• Galileo got one right!!! Inferred that some of
the light-colored features he was on the
moon’s surface were highlands (mountains).
• The highlands cast shadows which Galileo
could see.
Characteristics of the moon
• The moon is dry and airless. Compared to
Earth, the moon is small and has large
variations in its surface temperature.
• Temperature: 130C to -180C. Temperatures
vary so much because there is no atmosphere.
• Moon’s gravity is so week gases could escape.
Moon H2O?
No liquid water, but evidence of large patches of
ice near the poles.
Origin of the moon
Scientist theorize that a planet-sized object
collided with earth to form the moon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGTBJHFNywI
Check out the movie “the right stuff” for information on our journey to the
moon.
Comets
Comets are loos collections of ice, dust, and small
rocky particles whose orbits are usually very long,
narrow ellipses.
Comets (long-haired star)
• A comet head: when a comet gets close to the sun it
turns the ice into gas. Clouds of dust form an outer
layer called a coma.
• Comet’s tail: as it gets closer to the sun and heats up,
some of its gas and dust stream outward, forming a
tail.
• Origin of comets: most comets found in one of two
places; Kuiper belt and Oort cloud.
• kuiper belt is a doughnut-shaped region that extends
beyond Neptune’s orbit.
• Oort cloud is a spherical region of comets that
surrounds the solar system
Asteroids
• Most asteroids revolve around the sun
between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This
region is called the asteroid belt.
• Scientists have found more than 100,000
asteroids.
• Most are small (about 1km)
• At one point science thought that the this belt
was the remains of a planet, but later found
that the combined mass was to small to
support this idea.
Meteors
• A meteoroid is a chunk of rock or dust in
space. Comes from comets or asteroids.
Some come from asteroids collide, others
form when comets break down.
• Meteoroid enter Earth’s atmosphere, friction
with the air creates heat and produces a streak
of light; meteor
• If a meteoroid is large enough it may not burn
up completely. These will hit Earth’s surface
and are then called meteorites.