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THE DATA BOOK OF ASTRONOMY Also available from Institute of Physics Publishing The Wandering Astronomer Patrick Moore The Photographic Atlas of the Stars H. J. P. Arnold, Paul Doherty and Patrick Moore THE DATA BOOK OF ASTRONOMY P ATRICK M OORE I NSTITUTE O F P HYSICS P UBLISHING B RISTOL A ND P HILADELPHIA c IOP Publishing Ltd 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Multiple copying is permitted in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency under the terms of its agreement with the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0 7503 0620 3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available Publisher: Nicki Dennis Production Editor: Simon Laurenson Production Control: Sarah Plenty Cover Design: Kevin Lowry Marketing Executive: Colin Fenton Published by Institute of Physics Publishing, wholly owned by The Institute of Physics, London Institute of Physics Publishing, Dirac House, Temple Back, Bristol BS1 6BE, UK US Office: Institute of Physics Publishing, The Public Ledger Building, Suite 1035, 150 South Independence Mall West, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA Printed in the UK by Bookcraft, Midsomer Norton, Somerset CONTENTS FOREWORD vii 1 THE SOLAR SYSTEM 1 2 THE SUN 4 3 THE MOON 27 4 MERCURY 74 5 VENUS 86 6 EARTH 98 7 MARS 102 8 THE MINOR PLANETS 130 9 JUPITER 147 10 SATURN 171 11 URANUS 188 12 NEPTUNE 204 13 PLUTO 215 14 COMETS 222 15 METEORS 240 16 METEORITES 245 17 GLOWS AND ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS 252 18 THE STARS 257 19 STELLAR SPECTRA AND EVOLUTION 262 20 EXTRA-SOLAR PLANETS 274 21 DOUBLE STARS 278 22 VARIABLE STARS 283 23 STELLAR CLUSTERS 298 24 NEBULÆ 307 25 THE GALAXY 310 26 GALAXIES 313 27 THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE 319 28 THE CONSTELLATIONS 322 29 THE STAR CATALOGUE 327 30 TELESCOPES AND OBSERVATORIES 460 31 NON-OPTICAL ASTRONOMY 470 32 THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY 478 33 ASTRONOMERS 488 34 GLOSSARY 507 INDEX 518 FOREWORD This book may be regarded as the descendant of the Guinness Book of Astronomy, which was originally published in 1979 and ran to seven editions. However, the present book is different; it is far more comprehensive, and sets out to provide a quick reference for those who are anxious to check on astronomical facts. Obviously much has been left out, and not everyone will agree with my selection, but I hope that the result will be of use. It is up to date as of May 2000; no doubt it will need revision even before it appears in print! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have helped me in the production of this book. Remaining errors or omissions are entirely my responsibility. I am most grateful to: Dr. Peter Cattermole Dr. Allan Chapman Dr. Gilbert Fuelder David Hawksett Dr. Eleanor Helin Michael Hendrie Professor Garry Hunt John Isles Chris Lintott Dr. John Mason Brian May Dr. Paul Murdin Iain Nicolson Dr. John Rogers Professor F. Richard Stephenson Professor Martin Ward Dr. David Whitehouse Professor Iwan Williams Professor Sir Arnold Wolfendale and on the production side to Robin Rees, and to Nicki Dennis and Simon Laurenson of the Institute of Physics Publishing. To all these – thank you. Patrick Moore Selsey May 2000 AUTHOR’S NOTE In this book, I have retained references to the USSR with respect to past results. Now that the USSR has broken up, future developments come under the heading of the Commonwealth of Independent States. METRIC CONVERSION The current practice of giving lengths in metric units rather than imperial ones has been followed. To help in avoiding confusion, the following table may be found useful. Centimetres Inches Kilometres Miles 2.54 1 0.39 1.61 1 0.62 5.08 2 0.79 3.22 2 1.24 7.62 3 1.18 4.83 3 1.86 10.16 4 1.58 6.44 4 2.49 12.70 5 1.97 8.05 5 3.11 15.24 6 2.36 9.66 6 3.73 17.78 7 2.76 11.27 7 4.35 20.32 8 3.15 12.88 8 4.97 22.86 9 3.54 14.48 9 5.59 25.40 10 3.94 16.09 10 6.21 50.80 20 7.87 32.19 20 12.43 76.20 30 11.81 48.28 30 18.64 101.6 40 15.75 64.37 40 24.86 127.0 50 19.69 80.47 50 31.07 152.4 60 23.62 96.56 60 37.28 177.8 70 27.56 112.7 70 43.50 203.2 80 31.50 128.7 80 49.71 228.6 90 35.43 144.8 90 55.92 254.0 100 39.37 160.9 100 62.14 WEBSITES Readers may find the following websites of interest. http://www.nasa.gov/search/index.html http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ http://ecf.hq.eso.org/astroweb/yp astro resources.html http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/indext.html http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/ http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/subject.html http://www.mtwilson.edu/Science/index.html 1THE SOLAR SYSTEM The Solar System consists of one star (the Sun), the inaccurate. However, some asteroids have highly-inclined nine principal planets, their satellites and lesser bodies orbits, and so do many comets. It is now thought that short- such as asteroids, comets and meteoroids, plus a vast period comets, all of which have direct motion, come from amount of thinly-spread interplanetary matter. The Sun the Kuiper Belt, while long-period comets, many of which contains more than 99% of the mass of the system, move in a retrograde sense, come from the more distant and Jupiter is more massive than all the other planets Oort Cloud. combined. The centre of gravity of the Solar System lies Most of the planets rotate in the same sense as the just outside the surface of the Sun, due mainly to the mass Earth, but Venus and Pluto have retrograde rotation, while of Jupiter. Uranus is unique in having an axial inclination which is The Solar System is divided into two parts. There are greater than a right angle. The cause of these anomalies is four relatively small, rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, the unclear. Earth and Mars), beyond which come the asteroids, of which only one (Ceres) is over 900 km in diameter. Next come ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM the four giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), plus Pluto, which is smaller than our Moon and has an unusual In investigating the origin of the planetary system we do orbit which brings it at times closer in than Neptune. Pluto have one important piece of information: the age of the 1 may not be worthy of true planetary status, and may be only Earth is certainly of the order of 4.6 thousand million years the largest member of the ‘Kuiper Belt’ swarm of asteroidal- and the Sun, in some form, must obviously be rather older sized bodies moving in the far reaches of the Solar System. than this. Meteorites are, in general, found to be of about However, Pluto does seem to be in a class of its own, and the same age, while the oldest lunar rocks are only slightly in size is intermediate between the smallest principal planet younger. (Mercury) and the largest asteroid (Ceres). Planetary data Many theories have been proposed. In 1796 the are given in Table 1.1. French astronomer Pierre Simon de Laplace put forward It now seems that the distinctions between the various the Nebular Hypothesis, which was in some ways not classes of bodies in the Solar System are less clear-cut unlike earlier ideas due to Thomas Wright in England and than has been previously thought. For example, it is quite Immanuel Kant in Germany, but was much more credible. probable that some ‘near-Earth asteroids’, which swing Laplace started with a vast gas cloud, disk-shaped and in away from the main swarm, are ex-comets which have lost slow rotation, which shrank steadily and threw off rings, their volatiles; and some of the smaller satellites of the giant each of which condensed into a planet, while the central planets are almost certainly ex-members of the asteroid belt part of the cloud became the Sun. However, it was which were captured long ago. found that a ring of this sort would not condense into a All planets and asteroids move round the Sun in the planet. Moreover, according to the Nebular Hypothesis, same sense, and so do the larger satellites in orbit round their most of the angular momentum of the Solar System would primary planets, although some of the small asteroidal-sized reside in the Sun, which would be in quick rotation; satellites have retrograde motion (for example, the four actually, most of the angular momentum is due to the giant outer members of Jupiter’s family and Phœbe in Saturn’s). planets. The orbits of the main planets are not greatly inclined to that 1 ◦ I avoid using ‘billion’, because the American billion (now generally of the Earth, apart from Pluto (17 ), so that to draw a plan of accepted) is equal to a thousand million, while the old English billion the planetary system on a flat piece of paper is not grossly was equal to a million million.