Scioly.org

google squared gives information i heard

your right it is a really great sight to find more information

I wish RFS was still an event. For me, constellations, SNs and black holes were more exciting than our solar system.

x_SOninja_x wrote:no you don't need to know anything at all.

-atmospheric and geologic characteristics of the planets and their satellites
-kepler's laws and newton's laws and maybe some other laws/theories?
-famous past astronomers and what they did
-comets, asteroids, meteors, Kuiper belt, oort cloud
-features of the sun

stuff like that i think. (i haven't actually done this event before)

Anyways, does anyone know if they are still including Pluto on the list of planets to study or is it now considered a "planetoid" that we don't need to know as much about? (Sorry if that was confusing.) And speaking of a different kind of satellite, do we need to know about space probes/exploration, like Voyager and the Apollo missions?

Sorry about the double post, but I found some resources for SS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system
http://nineplanets.org/
http://library.thinkquest.org/23830/astronomers.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler's_l ... ary_motion
Or you could just search for whatever you need on Wikipedia or Google.

And then there's this picture (sizes are to scale, distances are not):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ts2008.jpg

AlphaTauri wrote:I wish RFS was still an event. For me, constellations, SNs and black holes were more exciting than our solar system.

x_SOninja_x wrote:no you don't need to know anything at all.

-atmospheric and geologic characteristics of the planets and their satellites
-kepler's laws and newton's laws and maybe some other laws/theories?
-famous past astronomers and what they did
-comets, asteroids, meteors, Kuiper belt, oort cloud
-features of the sun

stuff like that i think. (i haven't actually done this event before)

Anyways, does anyone know if they are still including Pluto on the list of planets to study or is it now considered a "planetoid" that we don't need to know as much about? (Sorry if that was confusing.) And speaking of a different kind of satellite, do we need to know about space probes/exploration, like Voyager and the Apollo missions?

I miss Reach a lot too!!!!!! I loved learning about constellations and nebulae and supernovae!!!!!!

Well, the pluto question is a good question. However, i wouldn't say that pluto is a planetoid (asteroid, minor planet)... more like "dwarf planet".
The "official" dwarf planets (aka recognized by IAU) right now are pluto, ceres, eris, makemake, and haumea.
There are prob tons of other dwarf planets out there in the kuiper belt but they haven't all been explored yet.
I suggest learning about Sedna too, because it's a very good candidate for joining those five dwarf planets.
Learning why Pluto is now a dwarf planet is a definite must, and it's really rather interesting
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/10 ... -a-planet/ (this explains why)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... r-all.html (this is fascinating... so is pluto considered a planet in illinois?)

How are you supposed to calculate escape velocity on a normal calculator? I could only find one that went up to 12 digits! THATS NOT ENOUGH!

Actually, according to the rules, there is a ban on programmable calculators but not scientific.

Each team may bring...a basic, non-programmable calculator with a square root function.

Great. That makes this whole page of discussion almost pointless.

Thread deleted back, as a page and a half of debate over a clearly defined rule point is cluttersome.

If one reads the above post, you will see that scientific calculators are allowed, and they can handle large numbers and scientific notation. There shouldn't be much room for debate in there...

Fair enough.

Definitely check out the PowerPoint on soinc. It provides good information on basic concepts.

YAH! But I'm still going to bring a back up calculator just in case...