Astronomy 2:5

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Adorah sat at her desk, sipping tea as she waited for footsteps to enter the room. It was a chillier evening, and she was starting to wear down as the semester ended. She finished marking the homework for a fourth year as a student entered, giving them a smile. As the bell rang, she shut down the door and waved her wand to dim the lights slightly. "Good evening! This week, we will be studying asteroids. Now, the word 'asteroid' quite literally means 'star-like' because the first spotted from Earth were faint lights in the night time sky. But they moved through celestial sphere much faster than stars."

Professor Zumwalt moved through the room, waving her wand so some images appeared on the board in the front. "Now, asteroids are rocky objects, sometimes with various make-ups of carbon, metals, and frozen water that orbit stars like our Sun. They are found throughout the solar system. The largest known is Ceres, also known as a dwarf planet, which is 1000km across. But there are others out there, some even smaller than your head," Professor Zumwalt said.


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"Now, most are found between Mars and Jupiter, which is referred to as the main asteroid belt." The Professor paused a moment to let the students reflect on her words before continuing. "For those of you acquainted with muggle movies, asteroid belts aren't the same daring struggle to fly through as you might think. Asteroid belts have millions of asteroids, true, but reasonably sized asteroids are typically millions of kilometers apart. If you were to stand on one, you most likely wouldn't see another with your naked eye."


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Yellow rings are planets the outermost is Jupiter. White dots are the main asteroid belt.

"Another new term to note is the Kirkwood Gap, which is a gap or dip in the distribution of the orbits of main-belt asteroids. They are caused by Jupiter pulling asteroids outward, creating rings of asteroids within the belt, very similar to the rings of Saturn." Professor Zumwalt changed the image on the board to represent this new term. "Grouping asteroids in these rings is one way to classify the asteroids," Professor Zumwalt hardly noticed that she'd gone into another lecture once again. "Well, that's it for tonight," she assured loudly as one student nodded off in the back. "No homework this week, but keep reading up on your notes from semester, as the exams are coming up soon."
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For full credit, RP the lesson.
 
It appeared as though they had move on from the planets and instead onto learning about asteroids. Which was a little more interesting, he did have to admit, but it still wasn't really something he could say he cared all too much about. Swinging his legs under the desk, Miles slouched forward, resting his chin in his palm as he listened to the lecture. Absently he did take a few notes on what the Professor was saying, even though he was sure he should probably be taking more notes as the exams were coming up, and he was likely going to forget most of this stuff come the morning. Bt lectures were, in essence, just really boring. Miles was just thankful when the lesson was finally over, quickly standing up and gathering his things together before heading down the stairs and back to the common room for the evening.
 
Finley sat towards the back of the lesson today as he watched the professor talk about the asteroid belts and whatever else they were learning about today. He really wished he didn’t find Astronomy so boring but he could hardly help it. He took a couple of notes, specifically about the different sizes of asteroids within the belt and then did a little doodle of Saturn’s rings before the class finished up and he was able to head out.​
 

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