Costello Space Art

A) The Earth rotates or spins at over 1000 miles per hour, taking 24 hours or one day to make one rotation. 

B) The Earth revolves around our star “The Sun,” at 30 kilometers a second or       67,000 miles per hour, taking one year to make one revolution.

C) Our solar system ( Solar  =’s, the sun, --, System  =’s, the planets, moons, asteroids and comets) revolves around the galaxy at 220 kilometers per second or 490,000 miles per hour, taking 225 million years to make one rotation around the galaxy.

D) Our four and a half billion year old solar system has made 18 revolutions around        the galaxy since its formation four and a half billion years ago.  The galaxy itself,          with its 100b to 300 billion other stars is about 10 billion years old.  Many stars            are younger than our Sun, most are older than the Sun.  Some stars are bigger             than the Sun, some are smaller than the Sun and some stars are just like our star,        the Sun.

E) In its orbit, the Earth is closest to the Sun  during the months of December and           January. In the summer for the north hemisphere, the Earth is further from the            Sun but the axis angle tilts the Earth so the northern hemisphere receives a more        direct hit from the light and heat from the Sun. In the winter the north receives the       light from the Sun at a low angle which produces less heat during the day                      causing the cold of winter. To see this, look at how low in the sky the Sun is in             the winter compared to how high in the sky it is in the summer. 

 

F) The Earth has a diameter of 7,926 miles / 12,756.3 Km. G) The Earth’s axial tilt is 23.45% H) Atmospheric conditions,- Pressure = 101.325 kPa,  Nitrogen = 78%      Oxygen = 21%,  Argon = 1%, I) Water covers 71% of the Earth. (97% sea water, 3% fresh water. J) In a nutshell, we live in  a Universe that is approximately 14 billion years old that started with an explosion of space and with that the beginning of time.  The Big Bang caused a burst of radiation and a burst of heat of trillions of degrees which caused the building blocks of matter to form. Separately, these building blocks were made of nothing but when they combined with one another they became protons, neutrons and electrons. When the Universe cooled further, it forced the protons, neutrons and electrons to combine and when they did 300,000 years after the Big Bang, they formed Hydrogen atoms.  These Hydrogen atoms later seperated in great groups or globs, some 100’s of thousands of light years in diameter.  Later the atoms started to bump into each other and stick together and they began to grow in size using gravity to collect more and more hydrogen atoms until they were the size of stars.  Some of these were huge stars with diameters as big as a billion miles in diameter.  At the center of these      proto-stars, the pressure from the inward pull is building the temperature until it reaches a point where the star somewhat ignites and starts fusing the hydrogen atoms together. When the two atoms combine they form Helium atoms.  Then a third atom combines to make Lythium and a forth to make Beryllium all the way up to the 26th natural element Iron. All the higher elements are made when these giant stars end their lives in Super Nova explosions which causes even higher temperatures which forces the iron atoms to combine with one another. Later after the star has blown its matter into space, gravity again will take over and recombine these new elements into to hundreds of new stars.  Many of these new stars will also have planet systems revolving around them. These new planets now had all the elements to make the rocks, the water, the air and finally life itself. All this that you’ve been reading has taken around 14 billion years to happen. Living an average of 70 years, we humans have a hard time with the concept of this time.  Unlike us, the Universe has the time.                                                                                                  Look up