SPACE PHYSICS

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Table of Contents
Note From Author .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Earth & The Solar System .................................................................................................................................... 3
Motion of The Earth .......................................................................................................................................... 3
Day & Night Cycle........................................................................................................................................... 3
Rising & Setting of The Sun ........................................................................................................................ 3
The Seasons..................................................................................................................................................... 3
Motion of The Moon ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Phases................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Rising & Setting .............................................................................................................................................. 5
Orbital Speed ...................................................................................................................................................... 6
The Solar System ............................................................................................................................................... 6
Asteroids .......................................................................................................................................................... 7
Comets .............................................................................................................................................................. 7
Elliptical Orbits .............................................................................................................................................. 7
Origin ..................................................................................................................................................................... 8
How They Formed .......................................................................................................................................... 8
Planet Gravitational Field Strength ............................................................................................................... 9
Travel Times ........................................................................................................................................................ 9
Planetary Data ................................................................................................................................................... 10
Stars & The Universe............................................................................................................................................ 11
The Sun as a Star .............................................................................................................................................. 11
Nuclear Reactions in Stars ......................................................................................................................... 11
Stars .................................................................................................................................................................... 12
Light Years ..................................................................................................................................................... 12
Galaxies........................................................................................................................................................... 12
The Life Cycle of a Star ............................................................................................................................. 13
The Universe ...................................................................................................................................................... 14
The Milky Way (Again) ................................................................................................................................ 14
The Expanding Universe ............................................................................................................................. 14
Microwave Background Radiation.............................................................................................................. 14
Hubble’s Law .................................................................................................................................................. 15

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Note From Author

I would just like to tell you that my notes may be missing some things here and there or
may have some unneeded information every now and then, sorry about that.

It’s kind of hard to make notes with a book that has information embedded inside the
many paragraphs and having that as my only resource makes the process even more
troublesome.

Anyway, that’s all for this section, now you can start with the actual content!

Hope this helps!

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Earth & The Solar System

Motion of The Earth

Day & Night Cycle

Day and night is caused by the constant rotation of Earth on its axis.

The earth makes a revolution every 24 hours, this means that in one half of the time (12
hours), it is daytime and in the other half, it is night-time.

Rising & Setting of The Sun

The rotation of the earth on its axis causes the sun to rise from east and set at west.

The Seasons
There are 2 factors that cause seasons, one being the fact that it takes the earth around
365 days to complete an orbit around the sun and the other is the tilt of the Earth on its
axis (23.5‫)ﹾ‬.

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Figure 1

Part Season Day & Night Length Hemisphere Tilt

Long Days Northern hemisphere tilted away from
BCD Spring & Summer
Short Nights the sun
Southern hemisphere tilted away from
Short Days
FGH Autumn & Winter the sun
Long Nights

Northern Hemisphere Day & Southern Hemisphere Day &

Part Date
Night Length Night Length
Longest Day Shortest Day
C June 21st
Shortest Night Longest Night

Shortest Day Longest Day

G December 21st
Longest Night Shortest Night

March 20th
Night & Day Have Same Length Night & Day Have Same Length
A & E And
(Equinox) (Equinox)
September 23rd

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Motion of The Moon

Phases
The moon completes an orbit around the sun in a month.

As the moon rotates around the earth, it appears differently to us, this means that the
moon has phases.

Figure 2

Image From timeanddate.com

The shaded parts are the parts which we don’t see as the sun light does not

go onto them.

Rising & Setting

The tilt of the Earth on its axis causes the moon to rise from the east and set at the
west.

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Orbital Speed
To calculate the average orbital speed, we use the formula:
2𝜋𝑟
𝑣=
𝑇
𝑂𝑟𝑏𝑖𝑡 𝐶𝑖𝑟𝑐𝑢𝑚𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒
𝐴𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑂𝑟𝑏𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑒𝑑 =
𝑂𝑟𝑏𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑

Orbital Period is the time taken to complete 1 orbit

Average orbital speed is the speed of an object that is orbits around a body.

The Solar System

The solar system is made of:

Name Description
The sun This is a start that is in the middle and is the heart of the Solar
System.
Eight Planets Inner Planets: Outer Planets:
1. Mercury 1. Jupiter
2. Venus 2. Saturn
3. Earth 3. Uranus
4. Mars 4. Neptune

They are smaller, solid, rocky, They are large, colder, have
have a layered structure, and low densities, and are mainly
have high densities. made up of gases.
Asteroid Belt This is a belt of asteroids going around the sun, it can be found
between Mars & Jupiter.
Moons These are the moons that orbit the planets in the solar system.
(Like IO, Europa, Phobos, etc)
Minor Planets These are dwarf planets (like Pluto or Ceres) and certain asteroids
from the asteroid belt.
Smaller Bodies Like comets (i.e., Halley’s Comet) & other small bodies.

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Asteroids
An asteroid is any object that orbits a star and does not have a large enough mass for
gravitational attraction to pull it into spherical shape.

Asteroids are classified as minor planets.

Comets
Comets are objects that consist of a nucleus of ice and dust.

When comets are near the sun, they develop a bright head and long tail that points away
from the sun.

Elliptical Orbits
Elliptical orbit basically refers to the path an object orbits around another object:

Figure 3 Figure 4

Image Source: NSO Elliptical orbit of a comet

This is the elliptical orbit of a planet around the sun

As you saw in both figures, the sun was inside the elliptical orbit, but not in the middle,
the reason for this is that the sun is never in the middle of an elliptical orbit unless the
orbit is perfectly circular.

In Figure 4, we can see that the elliptical orbit of a comet is in an oval shape, it shows us
that the speed of the comet increases as it approaches the sun and decreases as it moves
away, energy is conserved as the kinetic energy the comet had when near the sun is
converted to potential energy.

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Origin
How They Formed
Formation
Sun Formed when gravitational attraction pulled clouds of Hydrogen gas and dust.
First, the matter that was left after creating the sun formed an accretion disk,
Planets
gravitation attraction eventually pulled the matter together to form planets.

Planet Formation
Planets Group Inner Outer
Position Between Sun & Asteroid Belt After Asteroid Belt
Dense Low Density
Small Large
Properties
Rocky Mainly Made of Gases
Layered Structure Cold

As the sun grew, it became hotter.

Since these planets were in the
This meant that the area of the inner colder region, far from the sun.
planets would also be very hot, this
This meant that the light molecules
caused light molecules to be in gaseous
were able to exist as solids.
or liquid form.
This meant that they would be made
This meant that the inner planets would
Property of the lighter molecules which had
be made of matter with high melting
Reasoning low melting points and were less
points which also meant that they would
dense, these included Hydrogen,
be dense, these included metals and
Methane, Water, etc.
silicates.

Since most of the leftover matter

Since there was a low number of heavy
was the light elements, this resulted
elements, this resulted with the inner
with the outer planets being large and
planets being small, rocky, and solid.
gaseous.

Some Things to Know About the Sun

The sun makes up most of the mass of the Solar System (more than 99%).

Another thing is that the force that causes the objects (like planets) to keep orbiting the
sun is the gravitational attraction of the sun.

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Planet Gravitational Field Strength

Gravitational field strength of a planet depends on the mass of the planet.

Planet Mass Gravitational Field Strength

Increase Increase
Decrease Decrease
𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑡 𝑀𝑎𝑠𝑠 ∝ 𝐺𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐹𝑖𝑒𝑙𝑑 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ

Gravitational Field Strength acting on an object decreases as the distance between the
object and the planet increases.

Distance Between Object & Planet Gravitational Field Strength

Increase Decrease
Decrease Increase
1
𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝐵𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑂𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 & 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑡 ∝
𝐺𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐹𝑖𝑒𝑙𝑑 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ

Travel Times
To calculate the amount of time light takes to travel through space, we can use:
𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒
𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑒𝑑 =
𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒

We can then rearrange the formula to give time:

𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒
𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 =
𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑒𝑑

Note:
Speed refers to the speed of light (3 x 108)

The value for distance is given in the question.

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Planetary Data
One of the requirements in the 2023 syllabus is to analyse and interpret planetary data
for various things.

We get this table for reference:

Figure 5

Table With Data for Each Planet

Here is the reasoning for the required things:

Value How It Changes Reasoning

This happens because the elliptical orbit
Orbital Increases as distance from the sun
grows larger because the distance from
Distance increases.
the sun increases.
Orbital Decreases as distance from the sun As the distance from the sun increases
Speed increases. the gravitational field decreases which
means that the centripetal force is
Orbit Increases as distance from the sun
weaker, this decreases the orbital speed
Duration increases.
and increases the orbital duration.
Decreases as distance from sun
Sun emits infrared radiation; the
Surface increases (except Venus which has
intensity of this radiation decreases as
Temperature high surface temperature due to its
we go farther from the sun.
carbon clouds which traps heat).
Decrease as distance from sun
increases (except Uranus & Saturn,
Density Discussed in planet formation
they are ice giants, so they have more
density than gas giants)
Surface
Discussed in Planet Gravitational Field Strength
Gravity

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Stars & The Universe

The Sun as a Star

Star Size Elements Energy Emitted
Medium Hydrogen & Helium Infrared rays, Visible Light, and UV rays

Nuclear Reactions in Stars

Stars are powered by nuclear reactions.

These reactions are fusion reactions of Hydrogen & Helium.

Remember that these reactions can only occur in stars that are stable and have a hot and
dense enough core to carry out the fusion reactions.

Why The High Temperature?

The high temperature in the core is needed to sustain the nuclear reactions and is
maintained large amount of energy release in the fusion process.

How It Glows
Some of the energy that is generated at the core is transferred to the outer layers of
the star.

The outer layers are cooler and not as dense as the core but still allow the Hydrogen gas
to glow and emit EM radiation into space.

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Stars
Light Years
One light year is the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in one year.

1 light year = 9.5 x 1012 km

Galaxies
A galaxy is a large collection of stars.

Galaxies also consist of clouds of gas (mostly Hydrogen & dust) and they many rotate in
spiral disks

The Milky Way

The sun is a star that is in a galaxy called the milky way.

The solar system is also located in the milky way.

Unlike the sun, other stars are located light years away from the Earth.

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The Life Cycle of a Star

Stage What Happens What Forms
Interstellar clouds of dust & gas including Hydrogen
1 collapse under the gravitational attraction and forms a Protostar
protostar.
As the protostar’s mass increases, so does its
temperature. The protostar contracts under the internal
gravitation forces and Large Mass:
Smaller Mass:
when the core is hot enough, the fusion reaction starts Blue
Red dwarf
2 where Hydrogen turns to Helium. or
or
White
The protostar becomes stable when the gravitation Yellow dwarf
Star
attraction force pulling inwards is balanced out by the
force of expansion due to the high temperature.
When the star starts to run out of Hydrogen as fuel for
the nuclear reactions, it becomes unstable because the
balance between the forces pulling inward and the forces Red giant but it can also be a
3 pulling outward has been disturbed. When this happens, red supergiant if the star if
the core becomes extremely hot, and the remaining the star is very massive.
hydrogen is burned up fast and the surface is cooled
down.
Low Mass High Mass
Low Mass Stars High Mass Stars
Star Stars
When the red supergiant runs
out of helium, the core
collapses further into gravity A Neutron star
and hot enough for nuclear forms which
When the red giant
fusion of Carbon into Oxygen, acts as pulsar
runs out of helium, the
Nitrogen, and Iron to occur. White dwarf and sends out
red giant collapses
Nuclear fusion then stops and with glowing radio wave
under its own gravity
is released in a supernova ionised gas pulses.
and releases enough
explosion. around it.
4 energy to expel some of
In supernova explosions, star’s A Black hole
its outer layers.
brightness increases, and the (The white forms when the
This means that the
core is hot enough for fusion dwarf center is
core becomes a white
of many elements heavier than eventually extremely
dwarf at the center of
iron and becomes available for becomes a dense, a Black
a glowing shell of
the formation of new stars and black dwarf) hole sucks
ionised gas called
planetary systems. anything into
planetary nebula.
The center of the supernova it, from solids
collapses to a dense neutron to gases.
star and if the center is very
dense, black hole is formed

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The Universe
The Milky Way (Again)
The milky way galaxy is one of the many galaxies in the universe.

The diameter of the milky way is 100,000 light years and is made up of more than 800
billion stars.

The Expanding Universe

Redshift
Redshift is when the light emitted from stars in distant galaxies is shifted to the red end
of the spectrum, this means that it increases the wavelength.

Another thing to note is that the greater the distance between the observer and the star,
the more the redshift.

Redshift supports the fact that the universe is expanding & the big bang theory.

The Big Bang Theory

The theory suggests that all the matter of the universe was packed in a dense state, it
tells us that an explosion took place (the big bang) around 14 billion years ago.

The expansion of the universe continues to this day.

(Extremely short summary of the idea, hope it helps)

Microwave Background Radiation

The big bang produced radiation energy which exists in the universe as Cosmic Microwave
Background Radiation (CMBR) of a certain frequency.

CMBR fills the whole universe with similar intensities.

As the universe has expanded over the years, this caused the CMBR to redshift into the
microwave region of the EM spectrum.

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Hubble’s Law
This law states that:

“The velocity of the galaxy which is also known as the redshift is directly
proportional to its distance.” (Source: Byjus)

Formula:
𝑣 = 𝐻0 × 𝑑

Quantity Description How To Find It

Found from the change in wavelength
Speed at which the galaxy is moving away
v of the galaxy’s starlight due to
from the Earth.
redshift.
Ratio of the speed at which a galaxy is
moving away from the earth and the It’s a ratio, you must calculate it using
H0
distance between the galaxy and the Earth. the other 2 quantities.
𝑣
(𝑑 )

Calculated using the brightness of a

d Distance between the galaxy and the earth.
supernova in that galaxy.

Current Estimate of H0
The current estimate for H0 is 2.2 x 10-18 per second.

Calculating The Age of The Universe

We can rearrange the formula of Hubble’s law to get the age of the universe:
𝑑 1
=
𝑣 𝐻0
𝑑
refers to the age of the universe so we can say:
𝑣

1
𝑎𝑔𝑒 =
𝐻0

This means that the age would be around 4.5 x 1017 seconds.

We can simplify this value into years by dividing by 31,536,000 giving us:

1.4 x 1010 which is 14 billion years!

(It’s a rough estimate as I reduced the values to 1 d.p)

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Thanks For Reading!

If this helped you in any way…

I am happy for you

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