Rings, comets, asteroids, belts, and creation Flashcards
Planetary rings are on what planets
-all 4 jovian planets
Roche limit and rings
-rings lie within the Roche limit
-the distance from planet within, which tides break apart a satellite
Planetary rings
-all made up of small particles
-all ringed planet’s rings are made up of dark dust except Saturn’s which is made up of “rocks” of water ice
rings of Jupiter
-made of dust from moons
rings of saturn
-complex rings
-has rings we cant see (called diffuse rings)
-thousands of narrow rings and gaps
-embedded moons in gaps
Saturn’s rings (ABC system)
-A and C are translucent
-B is solid
-C has a division due to the moon mimas in it
-F ring is guarded by Shepard satellites
Uranus and Neptune’s rings
-narrow
-not uniform
2 asteroid belts
-Kuiper belt and Oort cloud
asteroids
-most lie in “main belt” which is 2.1-3.3 AU away between Mars and Jupiter
-orbits are jumbled and crossed
-few big, many small
-biggest is Cercus (still smaller than moon)
asteroid families
-groups of asteroids with similar orbits
-could be collision fragments
asteroid shapes and reason
-largest are round due to gravity
-smaller are irregular due to less gravity to pull together
reflection spectrum
-used to detect what asteroids are made of
3 main spectral classes
-C: outer belt, 3% dark flat carbon rich
-S: inner belt 15% dark flat silicates and iron
-M: outer belt 10% dark reddish iron
cercus
-large asteroid
-heavily cratered, spherical
-photos taken by Dawn spacecraft
-metallic core and rocky mantle
Vesta
-3rd largest asteroid
-almost spherical, heavily cratered
-metallic core and rocky mantle
