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Astronomy Assignment 1 Due week of 9/29 at the beginning of seminar Question 1: Mission to Mars Useful Numbers: Astronomical Unit

t (AU): 1 AU = 1.50 x 108 km Speed of light: c = 3.0 x 108 m/s Solar luminosity: Lsun = 3.8 x 1026 W

Professor Helfand told a story about one of the Apollo missions in which the time for radio signals to travel from the Moon to Earth and back played a key role. The Moon is the nearest body in the Solar System; for radio (or any electromagnetic-based) communications from Earth to astronauts or robots on any other member of the solar system the problem of communication lag is significantly worse. Consider the case of Earth and Mars, the solar system body that, after the Moon, has hosted the most visits from (robotic) Earthly visitors.

A) Assume the orbits of both Earth and Mars to be circular and their orbital separations (distance from the Sun) to be 1.0 Astronomical Unit (AU) and 1.5 AU respectively. Calculate the communication lag time (roundtrip) both when the two planets are closest and farthest from one another. (Hints: It may help you to sketch a diagram of their orbits. Pay attention to your units!)

B) Why might it be especially difficult to communicate with our robotic Martian explorers when Earth and Mars are at their greatest distance from each other? What strategy do your calculations in part A suggest for the successful operation of robotic missions to Mars?

Communications are not the only challenge when venturing beyond our Earthly abode. All space missions must also take into consideration sources of power its a long way to the nearest filling station if the tank runs dry! Most often engineers solve this problem through a combination of rechargeable batteries and solar panels. But theres no place quite like home. C) Using the numbers given in part A and above and the appropriate equation(s) from lecture, determine how much less power (Joules/second or equivalently Watts) a solar panel provides on Mars compared to Earth. Express your answer as a percentage of the power the solar panel would provide on Earth. (You may assume that the atmospheres of Earth and Mars allow roughly the same fraction of sunlight through. N.B. This assumption is not actually accurate but is an acceptable simplification for now.)

Launched in 1997 by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency), the Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004 to begin a four-year mission to study the planets extensive ring and moon system. Now on an extended mission to examine two of Saturns most intriguing moons, Titan and Enceladus, the probe sends back several gigabytes of data each day to scientists worldwide. D) Cassini carries an onboard nuclear power supply rather than solar panels. Given that Saturn is approximately 9.5 AU from the Sun, extend your reasoning from part C to provide a quantitative explanation why.

Question 2: Climbing the Distance Ladder Of all the stars in the Universe, we naturally know the most about our own: the Sun. Since we know the distance to the Sun and we can accurately measure its brightness, we can thus determine its luminosity, or total power output. If we then identify another star like the Sun based on other observable properties (e.g. color, atomic composition, etc.), we can deduce the luminosity of that star with some confidence that is, we know it must be similar to the Suns.

Suppose we observe a Sun-like star (call it Pollack) in a star cluster (call it John Jay) that also contains a star (Helfand) whose properties we dont know. Since they are both in John Jay, we know that the stars Pollack and Helfand are in close proximity to one another. We then observe some distant galaxy (Barnard) that contains many stars with similar properties to Helfand. A) Describe in a short paragraph but with as much detail as possible the logical steps involved in deducing, from the information above, the distance to the galaxy known as Barnard. (Hint: this process requires at least three steps.)

It is a general fact that we do not know much of anything with complete certainty, and that also turns out to be true here. Suppose that for stars like the Sun, the true distribution of luminosities is as shown in the histogram below. (Disclosure: these are not real data, we made them up.)

Relative number of sun-like stars per bin

3.5x1026

4.0x1026

Luminosity (W)

When we observe a particular Sun-like star (e.g., Pollack), we do not know where it lies within the above histogram (for more on histograms, see Habits Chapter 3:35-37). Sometimes, as in part A, we must assume that it has the same luminosity as the Sun in

order to proceed. However, this is not a perfectly accurate assumption, and it is important to understand how reliable it is. B) Use the histogram above to estimate the typical amount by which a Sun-like stars true luminosity differs from that of the Sun. This can be thought of as the standard deviation (see Habits Chapter 5:20-30) of the histogram and will be a number in Watts (W). What percentage of the solar luminosity is this? (Hint: to begin, it may help to draw a vertical line on the plot above marking the luminosity of the Sun.)

C) The answer to part B gives an estimate of the error we make by assuming that the star Pollack has exactly the same luminosity as the Sun. Given this, what can you say about the accuracy of the distance estimate to the Barnard galaxy? Optional: Express your answer quantitatively if you can.

D) Suppose that we only know of one system like John Jay (i.e., a star cluster containing both a Sun-like star and a Helfand star) but we know of many galaxies containing Helfand stars, and we use the Helfand stars to deduce the distances to all of these galaxies. If the only source of error in these measurements is the one considered in part B, have we made random errors or systematic errors in the galaxies distances? (See Habits, Chapter 5:20-23.)

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