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Welcome to the Space Studies Chalkboard!

Below, you will find many useful numbers and formulae utilized by aerospace and astronomy scientists.

Astronomical Distances:

Astronomical Unit (AU) = 1.496 x 10 km
Light Year (LY) ≈ 9.46 x 10 km
Parsec (pc) ≈ 3.09 x 10 km
Earth Radius (Er) ≈ 6,378 km
Average distance to Moon ≈ 238,900 m

≈ 384,400 km

≈ 30 Er

8

12

13

Temperature Scales and Conversions

Astronomical/Physical Constants:

Speed of Light (c) = 299,792 km/s (in a vacuum)

= 186,282 mph

≈ 3.00 x 10 km/s

Gravitational Constant (G) = 6.674 x 10 Nm /kg
Planck's Constant (h) = 6.26 x 10 Js
Stefan Boltzman Constant (σ) = 5.670 x 10 W/m K
Proton Mass = 1.673 x 10 kg
Electron Mass = 9.11 x 10 kg
Solar Mass (Ms) = 2 x 10 kg
Radius of Sun = 696,000 km
Luminosity of Sun = 3.8 x 10 W
Mass of Earth = 5.97 x 10 kg

-8

5

-11

2

2

-34

2

4

-27

-31

30

26

24

Parallax

Image Credit: thermal-engineering.org

Image Credit: Dr. Terry Herter, Cornell University

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Image Credit: NASA's Imagine the Universe

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