Astrophysics 101: Sol Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

MainePublisher: This cache page has been archived due to a land owner request. Please understand that adequate permission is required for all caches. If the issues are resolved later, please let me know and I will be happy to initiate another review.

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MainePublisher
geocaching.com volunteer reviewer

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Hidden : 9/12/2007
Difficulty:
1 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

This is the fourth in a series of caches intended to display the relative sizes of stellar (i.e., star like) objects. The intended scale is 1 kilometer = 1 inch. GC15DXX (The Crab Pulsar) serves as the center reference point for this series of caches.

Sol is the latin name for the sun, the star at the center of our solar system. The earth orbits the sun at a distance of 93 million miles (1 Astronomical Unit = 1 AU). Even at this great distance, the sun is quite bright (Energy Deposited ~ 1400 Watts/ Sq. meter). In fact, it is the energy from sun light that drives the Earth's climate and weather as well as supports most life on earth via photosynthesis. Things just wouldn't be the same without old Sol around!

The sun is located approximately 26,000 light years (~ 8000 parsecs) from the center of our galaxy (the Milky Way). It completes one galactic orbit every 250 million years with an orbital velocity of over 200 km/sec (Or about 1 light year every 1400 years). Old Sol is definitely on the move!

The sun is a medium mass, medium luminosity main sequence star. Although considered a mid size star, Sol is larger/brighter than approximately 85% of the stars in the Milky Way because of the power law distribution of stellar masses which favors smaller stars. Like all main sequence stars, the sun has a hydrogen to helium fusion reaction proceeding in it's cores. In fact, the sun converts over 4 million tons of matter into energy every second. Even at this profligate rate of mass conversion, the sun will spend over 10 billion years on the main sequence. Since it's estimate age is now 4.5 billion years, this leaves only about 5.5 billion years before the sun leaves the main sequence to become first a Red Giant and then to die as a White Dwarf. Essentially, old Sol is only just now entering middle age.

Sol has a radius of about 695,000 kilometers (~ 110 Earth radii). On the scale of this series (1 inch = 1 kilometer), the distance from this cache to the reference point GC15DXX (~11 miles) is the equivalent of the radius of the sun. Note the order of magnitude increase in size compared to the neutron star (~ 1 foot scale radius), the white dwarf (~ 0.10 mile scale radius), or the red dwarf ( 1.6 miles scale radius) depicted by the previous caches in this series.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Lrg nabgure zhygv-gehax gerr.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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