Astronomy Question-Very Confusing?

Question

Okay. I understand that we have been all around our solar system. I also understand that the planets are left and right. But why haven't we ever gone up or down in out solar system? Is there anything there?

Answer 1

Most of our solar system revolves around the sun in the same plane - sorta like a larger version of the rings of Saturn.  Most of the nearer stuff would at the level of the Sun's equator. If you traveled 'Up' or Down' away from this plane, you would find basically empty space until you reached the outer solar system, where the comets and such hang out in a messy sphere instead of a neat ring.

Answer 2

There are two reasons.  

1) Most of the stuff in the solar system lies within a plane.  There is nothing worth above and below this plane worth exploring

2) In terms of astromechanics, it takes a trememdous amount of energy to travel out of the system plane.  If we travel within our plane in the direction of Earth's motion, the speed of Earth's rotation actually adds to the spacecraft's speed and reduce energy need.  If we are travling out of the plane, we have the same energyneed but Earth's motion is no help to us.  That extra velocity needs to be generated by the spacecraft.  That is a lot of propellant.    

Answer 3

We have done it.  I don't know if much was learned but it seems it would be interesting to look "down" on the north pole of the sun and also to look "up" at the south pole.  The only reason I say this is that from our vantage point on earth we are about over the sun's equator.  Now the rotation of the sun itself is a little strange and that is because it (at least) seems to rotate at different speeds.  It is a ball of gas not a solid.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/s...

"Interesting" is as much as I can come up with.  I am sure if you click around you can probably find many other reasons that the scientists and astronomers hoped to learn from the ulysses mission.

I read a space book once describing the initial training of the astronauts when they were going to rendezous with each other while they were in orbit.  I remember the statement went something like this, "There is no up and down, no right or left, there is only "here" and "over there".  They practiced getting used to this concpt by taking two jeeps out on the desrt and driving around in two large circles.  Then, in order to "meet" they could slightly increase or decrease the radius of the circle they were on until they both got to the same circle, and hopefully not on the opposite side from the center point.  That book was either James Michener  "Space" (1982) or "The Right Stuff" (1979) by Tom Wolfe.  Both insightful for the lay guy or gal and also both are great reads.

Isaac Newton would agree with the other answerer who suggested thinking out side the box.  This might be better expressed by saying to ignore your own (and all of our's) egocentricity.  Isaac noticed the apple fall and millions of others had seen this or something similar.  By disregarding his own view of this he was able to realize that the "down" in each person's observation was different.  Not only different, but for two people on opposite sides of the earth their "downs" would be exactly opposite, 180 degrees out of whack.  From this he was able to see that down wasn't what people were seeing.  But what they were seeing instead of "down" was, "toward the center of the earth".  And from this he was able to figure out that the moon was actually "trying" to fall to the center of the earth.  And in the long haul he created his Laws of Motion and became famous.  And the rest of us, well we probably ate the apple and thought that was a pretty good deal.....lol

Now if an engineer has the responisbility of determining the orbital mechanics of the ulysess's mission he better get rid of his sense of up and down.  Let's list some "ups" and "downs" involved.

U or me   up = an arrow coming out of the top of our head,

Earth       up = an arrow coming out of the north pole

Sun         up = an arrow coming out of its north pole

All these "ups" are different.  Ur or my up would disagree with earth's up (unless of course that special case when we were standing at the north pole).  Indeed, just like Isaac's apple's down we could have uncountable "ups" that were in disagreement.

The earth's up would disagree with the sun's up because the earth's north south axis is tillted 20 deg or so from the sun's north-south axis.

If you go to the next step the "up" of our solar system's differs from the "up" of our galaxy by 55 deg.  Anyone calculating orbital mechanic for a space rocket would have to have this right or risk making a costly error.

Whew!...Knowing that many would disagree with me, I am going upstairs and lie down.  Hope I don't end up down in the celler doing chores....lol  Great question though!!

Here's a good picture of the ulysess trip

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...

Answer 4

We did once go "up and down" as you put it. The Ulysses probe was send into a trajectory which sends it over the poles of the sun, which requires it to fly in a ellipse angled about 90° to the plane of the solar system.

The problem is, for getting into such a orbit, you need to do a so called plane change maneuver (also called dog leg maneuver sometimes), which costs a lot of maneuver budget. for making this possible for Ulysses, they used Jupiter's gravity to do, what otherwise many tons of fuel would have done - rotate the velocity vector of Ulysses by 90°.

Jupiter is the planet with the strongest gravity in the solar system, allowing such powerful gravity-assist (or swing-by) maneuvers. Also, because Jupiter has it's minimum-energy launch window from Earth opening about every year, you have about two launch windows every year for such a gravity assists around Jupiter.

Ulysses is still up there, but it's trajectory sees so little changes, that it can be excluded that there is any significant object orbiting the sun outside the ecliptic plane. Also, the Ulysses mission ended on 1 July 2008, which means that the probe is now shutdown, and can't be used for measuring it's trajectory for changes. But on the other hand, it did not find anything outside the ecliptic plane since it's launch in 1990. The chances that there is something larger as a comet, which gravity got not detected in 18 years, is very low.

Answer 5

Because probes sent "right" or "left" are more beneficial; they capture data and images from neighboring planets, asteroids and comets. You can't do that if you go "up" or "down."

But just to make clear, there isn't no up, down, left, right, north, or south in space.

Answer 6

Actually one of the voyager space probes did go up... when it reached jupiter it went upwards while the other one continued... it is the one that went upwards that scientists were excited about when it reached the "oort cloud" what was once considered the edge of the solar system.

The reality is that due to the way the solar disc was generated in the suns creation then very little exists above or below it. Some meteors and comets do travel in these areas, but no planets and very little debris (in comparison).

Answer 7

You need to think a bit more outside the box.  In outer space, there is no left or right.  No up or down.  Think more like cubes.  Par sects.  We go where we want to go and we are still exploring our solar system.