Lecture 1: Introduction and The Earth as a Planet

Further reading

For the whole course

• Up-to-date planet information can be found at the NASA Planetary Sciences page http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planetary_home.html. This includes data on the planets, images, and information on the space missions, as well as links to other useful resources.
• NASA has a site with all the publicly released images from its Solar System program at the Planetary Photojournal, http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html
• "The Nine Planets: A Multimedia Tour of the Solar System" by Bill Arnett http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets has lots of good pictures and links
• "Views of the Solar System" by Calvin J. Hamilton, http://www.solarviews.com/eng/homepage.htm, is an excellent collection of images and animations of the solar system.
• "Solar System Live" at http://www.fourmilab.ch/solar/solar.html enables you to show the positions of all the solar system bodies at any time you like. Great fun to play with. You can even plot the positions of comets or asteroids to see where they are too.
• For general astronomical images, you can't do better than the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" website, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html. A new picture every day, with links to many other interesting sites where you can follow up the topic.

For tonight's lecture

• There's also a web-site devoted to the "Snowball Earth" theory, at http://www.snowballearth.org/slides.html
• The US Geological Survey has a site called "This Dynamic Earth: the story of plate tectonics" at http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/dynamic.html, which covers the basics of geology very nicely.
• There's a good article on geomagnetic reversals by David Gubbins in Nature vol. 452 p. 165; I found a copy online at http://www.ladhyx.polytechnique.fr/people/willis/papers/Nature425.pdf

Source for images

• Solar system; from Chandra Photo Journal http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/orion/najita.html
• Sun: SOHO image of the Sun, taken in ultraviolet light. http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov
• Voyager Solar System Family Portrait: from NSSDC Photo Gallery, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/
• MESSENGER Solar System Family Portrait: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/.sciencePhotos/image.php?image_id=399
• Solar system montage: The Sun and nine planets approximately to scale. http://www.solarviews.com/eng/solarsys.htm
• Planetary data: from NSSDC Planetary Fact Sheets, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planetfact.html
• Sizes of orbits: from http://www.solarviews.com/eng/solarsys.htm
• Titius-Bode law: from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Titius-Bode_law
• Jupiter and Saturn families of moons: from NSSDC Photo Gallery, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/
• Moons: from Paul Schenk, "Satellites of the Outer Planets – An Image Tour" http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/outerp/moons.html
• Moons by size: http://www.solarviews.com/eng/solarsys.htm
• Co-planar and circular orbits: generated using "Solar System Live" http://www.fourmilab.ch/solar/solar.html. These particular positions are for 1 March 2005, viewed from heliocentric latitude 0o, longitude 180o and latitude 90o, longitude 0o.
• Title image: from APOD 2007 March 25 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070325.html
• Sun at perihelion and aphelion: image by Enrique Luque Cervigón, from APOD 2007 July 9 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070709.html
• Earth: view from Apollo 17, Astronaut Photography of the Earth, http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=AS17&roll=148&frame=22727; Galileo image of Earth, http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/images/australia.html; image of jet stream from Views of the Solar System, http://www.solarviews.com/cap/earth/jet.htm
• Clouds and crescent moon viewed from space: ISS/NASA picture, from Astronomy Picture of the Day 2007 March 20 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070320.html
• Thickness of crust: from USGS http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/structure/CrustalStructure/
• Topography of the sea floor: from Windows to the Universe, at http://www.windows.ucar.edu/; movie from Science on a Sphere http://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/Land/etopo2.html
• Tsunami maps: from Asian Tsunami Imagery, http://www.globalsecurity.org/eye/andaman-maps.htm
• Earthquake maps: from USGS http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2010/
• Tsunami animations: from "Teaching Geoscience with Visualizations: Tsunami" http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/collections/tsunami.html
• Plate tectonics diagrams: from "This Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics" , online edition http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/dynamic.html
• GPS plate motions: from NASA GPS Time Series http://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/mbh/series.html
• Volcano map: from the Smithsonian Institute:'s "Global Volcanism Program: Volcanoes of the World" http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_regions.cfm
• Volcanic chains: from "Volcano World" http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/vwlessons/hot_spots/introduction.html and http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/australia/volc_australia.html
• Plate tectonics animation: from UC Berkeley Geology: Plate Tectonics http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tectonics.html
• Birth of a new ocean: from "Geologists witness ‘ocean birth', BBC News 8 December 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4512244.stm and http://www.futurity.org/earth-environment/seafloor-dynamics-at-work-splitting-continent/
• Images of the rift: from Global Volcanism Program: Monthly Reports http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0201-113&volpage=var
• IODP drilling platform: from NSF Press Release 06-071 http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=106899
• Earth's magnetic field: from CSULA Geology 150: Plate Tectonics http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/acolvil/plates.html
• Oldest rocks on Earth: from GEMOC Annual Report 2003, http://www.es.mq.edu.au/GEMOC/AnnualReport/annrep2003/Reshighlights03.htm
• Movement of the magnetic pole: from Geological Survey of Canada: Geomagnetism http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/nmp/long_mvt_nmp_e.php
• Magnetic dynamo: from Science@NASA: Earth's Inconstant Magnetic Field http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/29dec_magneticfield.htm
• Geomagnetic reversals: from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
• Rock cycle: from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/chemistry/geology/rockcyclerev2.shtml
• Craters: from Windows to the Universe, at http://www.windows.ucar.edu/
• Atmosphere temperature profile: from Windows to the Universe, at http://www.windows.ucar.edu/. Atmospheric circulation: from "The Greenhouse Effect and Climate Change", Australian Bureau of Meteorology, http://www.bom.gov.au/info/climate/change/gallery/
• Mt Pinatubo eruption: Wikipedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pinatubo91eruption_clark_air_base.jpg. Dust spreading: from NASA's Visible Earth http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1803
• Cyclone off Brazil: from Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2004 April 6 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040406.html; Cumulonimbus clouds over Siding Spring mountain: photo by HMJ; Lightning over Kitt Peak, from Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2000 July 17, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000717.html
• Tropical Cyclone Billy: from Earth Observatory News, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36272
• Field of cumulonimbus: from Shutt;le views the Earth: Clouds from space http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/clouds/clouds_index.shtml
• Sunset over the Pacific: from APOD 2011 April 12 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110412.html
• The water cycle: from USGS Water Science Basics, http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycle.html
• The carbon cycle: from NASA's Remote Sensing Tutorial, Section 16: Earth System Cycles, http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect16/Sect16_4.html
• Banded iron formations: from ATM S211: Climate and Climate Change, http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2002Q4/211/notes_evolution.html
• Oxygen content of atmosphere: from NASA Astrobiology News 2002-01-18 "In Search of ET's Breath", http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/news/expandnews.cfm?id=1216
• Snowball Earth: from BBC, "Life may have survived ‘Snowball Earth' in ocean pockets', http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11992299
• Milankovitch cycles: from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
• Earth at night: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
• Galileo image of Earth: from the NSSDC Photo Gallery: Earth http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/photogallery-earth.html#galileo; Earth Spin movie from http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/stories/nasm/movies.html
• Carl Sagan, "A search for life on Earth from the Galileo spacecraft", Nature 1993, 365:715-21

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Last updated 30 August 2011