Sunday, 24 March 2013

Earth- The third rock from Sun

We all know that "Earth" is the only planet known till date which is hosting life. It is the third planet from the Sun which is sometimes referred as the world or the blue planet. This planet is the home of millions of species including humans.




Here towards left shows the complete image of earth from space.

The picture is taken from Apollo 17 during its flight to moon.




Do you know?
When compared to the distance from center of earth to the mountain peaks, Mount Chimborazo is taller than Mount Everest due to its presence near the equator.





 

     It is said that earth was formed approximately around 4.54 billion years ago and earliest life appeared around 4 billions years ago. Due to its presence in the habitable zone it is able to bear life on it. It go only one natural satellite the moon. Earth gravitationally interacts with the other space objects especially with the moon and the sun. It got a rotational period on its own axis of 23hr 56min 4sec and a revolution period around sun of 365.24 days. The rotational period is so high that the shape of earth is not exactly sphere but is oblate spheroid, which means it possesses a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator. The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital period, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year.

     Earth is the fifth largest and the densest planet of the solar system. The bary center of the earth and the moon lies somewhere outside the center of earth due to the large size of moon. Moon is the largest natural satellite relative to its primary size and the second densest satellite in the entire solar system.



The image on left shows the sizes of the planets of our solar system and the earth is shown as third planet from left.












Few other characteristics of earth:

Escape velocity                   :  11.186 km/s
Equatorial rotation velocity :  465.1 m/s
Surface pressure                 : 101.325 KPa
Euatorial radius                    : 6378.1 km
Axial tilt                                  : 23°26'21".4119
Gravitational acceleration
on surface                             : 9.8m/s2








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