Lecture Date |
Topic |
Reading |
Workshop |
Preliminaries: The scale of the Solar System and the Sun |
| Aug. 26 |
Inventory of the Solar System |
Sec. 1.1, 1.3-1.4 |
|
| Aug. 28 |
A few facts about the Sun; blackbody radiation; nucleosynthesis; the Sun's effective temperature; solid angle; Planck's formula, Stefan's Law, and Wien's Law |
|
Workshop 1 |
The Moon and the four terrestrial planets: An introduction to the Solar System's rocky bodies |
| Sep. 2 |
Earth's moon: structure and composition; cratering; the temperature of sunlight-heated bodies |
Sec. 2.5.2, 3.4.2, 4.3, 4.6 |
|
| Sep. 4 |
Minerals and rocks: isotope fractionation, and radiometric ages of igneous rocks |
|
Workshop 2 |
| Sep. 9 |
Mercury: its structure, composition, surface water, and orbit, compared to the Moon; differentiated structures and the moment of inertia of round bodies |
Sec. 2.5.3, 3.4.3 |
|
| Sep. 11 |
Venus: calculation of inertial moments; Venus' hidden surface; volcanism; the interior; how Venus' lack of water shut off its plate tectonics |
Sec. 2.1-2.2, 2.4-2.5, 3.4.4 |
Workshop 3 |
| Sep. 16 |
Venus and Earth: atmospheric circulation, Hadley cells, Ferrell cells, and polar cells; the greenhouse effect; Earth's plate tectonics and interior |
Ch. 5 |
|
| Sep. 18 |
Earth and Mars: Phobos and Deimos; orbital element oscillation; water and ice on Mars; life on Mars |
Sec. 3.4.5 |
Workshop 4 |
Celestial mechanics |
| Sep. 23 |
Newton's laws; dynamics of planets and spacecraft in the Solar System; circular orbits; elliptical orbits |
Sec. 7.2 |
|
| Sept. 25 |
Kepler's Laws; center of mass; perturbation of orbits and orbital resonances: dynamics of the asteroid belt |
Sec. 7.3.0-7.3.1 |
Workshop 5 |
| Sept. 30 |
Transfer orbits for spacecraft and for asteroids; multiple-body orbiting systems; the restricted three-body problem and Lagrange points |
|
|
| Oct. 2 |
Classification of asteroids and meteorites; asteroid moons and interiors; rubble piles; composition and age of asteroids and meteorites |
Sec. 7.3.2-7.3.4, Ch. 9 |
Workshop 6 |
| Oct. 7 |
Albedo and emissivity; the ice line; nonuniform planetary surface temperature |
|
|
| Oct. 9 |
Midterm #1 |
|
No workshops this week! |
The giant planets |
| Oct. 14 |
No class - Fall break! |
|
|
| Oct. 16 |
Heat conduction; radiogenic heating of planets and planetoids; interior temperature structure and melting of planetoids; differentiation of rocky bodies |
|
Workshop 7 |
| Oct. 21 |
The gas-giant and ice-giant planets: helium rain and the luminosity of Jupiter and Saturn; inteiors of the giant planets |
Sec. 6.4 |
|
| Oct. 23 |
Hydrostatic equilibrium; adiabatic processes in ideal gases; convection and convection zones; temperature structure of planetary atmospheres; Jeans escape of light molecules |
|
Workshop 8 |
| Oct. 28 |
Planetary rings: tides, the Roche limit and origin of planetary rings |
|
|
| Oct. 30 |
Planetary rings: the Hill sphere and gaps in rings, perturbations and wave structure in rings, horseshoe orbits, ring shepharding, measurements of moments of inertia |
|
Workshop 9 |
Smaller denizens of the outer Solar System |
| Nov. 4 |
The moons of the giant planets: orbital resonances and tidal heating; thermal and orbital evolution; lunar names; life on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn; timescale of giant planet formation in infant planetary systems |
Sec. 3.4.6 |
|
| Nov. 6 |
The moons of the giant planets (continued) |
Sec. 3.3.4, 3.4.7 |
Workshop 10 |
| Nov. 11 |
Solar radiation and small bodies: radiation pressure; the Poynting-Robertson effect; comet tails; composition of comets; the Oort Cloud |
Sec. 7.5-7.6 |
|
| Nov. 13 |
Transneptunian asteroids: the Nice Model; Uranus, Neptune, and the Late Heavy Bombardment; distribution and composition of transneptunian objects |
Sec. 7.4 |
Workshop 11 |
| Nov. 18 |
Midterm #2 |
|
|
The formation and evolution of planetary systems |
| Nov. 20 |
Planet formation: protoplanetary disks; orbital speed of small particles in a gaseous disk; hot- and cold-start planets; sedimentation and pebble formation; headwinds; the streaming instability and planetesimal formation; runaway accretion; the isolation mass; transitional disks |
Sec. 1.2, 2.3, 8.2.1-8.2.5 |
No workshops this week! |
| Nov. 25 |
Planet formation (continued) |
Sec. 8.2.6-8.2.11 |
|
| Nov. 27 |
No class - Thanksgiving break! |
|
No workshops this week! |
| Dec. 2 |
Exoplanets: demographics and diversity; superearths and Neptunes; detection of exoplanets |
|
|
| Dec. 4 |
Exoplanets (continued) |
|
Workshop 12 |
| Dec. 17 |
Final exam |
|
|