Third Quiz Flashcards
What are the terrestrial planets?
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars
What are the Jovian planets?
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
What is the most obvious difference between terrestrial and Jovian planets?
Size
What makes up the interiors of planets?
gases, rocks, and ices
What makes up the atmosphere of Jovian planets?
Hydrogen, helium, methane, and ammonia
What makes up the atmosphere of terrestrial planets?
They are lacking
What is the nebula?
A cloud of gas and/or dust in space
What is the nebular theory?
The sun and planets formed from a rotating disk of dust and gases
What is Mercury known as?
The innermost and second smallest planet from the sun
What is prominent about Mercury’s surface?
Has cratered highlands, smooth terrain, and resemble the moon’s maria
What is unique about Mercury’s temperature?
Mercury has the greatest temperature extremes of any planet
Why is Venus referred to as “Earth’s twin”?
It is similar in size, density, mass and location
What is prominent about Venus’s surface?
It is covered in thick clouds that visible light cannot penetrate
What is different in Mars’s atmosphere?
Despite it being thin with dust storms, it causes color changes
What is unique about Jupiter’s size?
Jupiter is 2 1/2 times greater than the mass of all the other planets and moons combined
What is unique about The Great Spot of Jupiter?
It is the size of two earth circles
In Jupiter’s satellite system, how many moons are there?
63 moons
What was the story behind Jupiter’s ring system?
It is one of the most unexpected discoveries made by Voyager 1
What is prominent about Saturn?
The system of rings
What is another unique feature of Saturn?
Winds roaring at up 1500 km per hour
What is unique about Saturn’s moon?
Titan is the largest moon and is bigger than Mercury
What is Uranus’s prominent feature?
Axis of rotation
What is Neptune’s prominent feature?
Winds exceed 1000 km per hour and is one of the windiest
What is unique about pluto?
It’s orbit is highly eccentric and occasionally travels inside Neptune
What is an asteroid?
A small rocky body whose diameter can range from a few hundred km to less than a km
Where do most asteroids lie in?
Between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune
What are comets made of?
Rocky and metallic pieces held together by frozen gases
Where do comets generally revolve?
About the sun in elongated orbits
What do some comets develop?
A tail that extends for millions of km
What is the most famous short-period comet?
Hailey with 76 years of orbit
What is the Kuiper belt?
Most move in nearly circular orbits that lie roughly in the same plane as planets
What is the Oort cloud?
Long orbit period that is distributed in all directions which formed a spherical shell
What is a meteoroid?
A small solid particle that travels through space
What is a meteor?
When a meteoroid enters earth atmosphere and burns up
What is a meteorite?
Any portion of a meteoroid that reaches earth’s surface
