Asteroids are the leftover rocky materials from the formation of the
Solar System that reside primarily in a broad belt between the orbits of
Mars and Jupiter. This lecture reviews the physical and orbital
properties of Asteroids, and discusses the role of Jupiter and orbital
resonances in dynamically sculpting the Main Belt of Asteroids. Once
again, we se ... Show More
Mar 2006
Lecture 44: Life, the Universe, and Everything (Life Part II)
How can we search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and what are we looking for? This second part of a 2-part lecture picks up where we left off yesterday by examining SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, and reviews what we might look for and how. We will use thi ... Show More
45m 56s
Sep 2006
Lecture 2: Astronomical Numbers
Before we can begin our exploration of astronomy, we need to develop a
common language for notating large numbers, and introduce the basic
units of length, mass, and time that we will use throughout the quarter.
We will first re-introduce the basic metric system, explaining how t ... Show More
43m 29s