Unit 6: The outer Planets Flashcards
How big is Jupiter
318 earth masses
Explain the movement of Jupiters Clouds (Belts and Zones)
- Jupiters clouds move in east-west bands
- reddish-coloured belts alternate with white-coloured zones
- against the background of the zones and belts, we see turbulent swirling cloud patterns (ovals)
What is the Great Red Spot
- on Jupiter
- huge typhoon-like storm that has lasted for at least 300 years
- 25,000km long and 12,000 wide
Explain Differential rotation on Jupiter
- near the poles, the rotation period of Jupiter’s atmosphere is five min longer than that at the equator
- polar rotation time: 9h 55 min
- Equatorial Rotation time: 9h and 50 min
What are the three main components of Jupiters atmosphere
- ammonia
- ammonium hydrosulfide
- water
- it is not expected for anything to survive penetration of Jupiter’s atmosphere
How are the belts and zones of Jupiter created?
- combination of the planets convection and its rapid differential rotation
- belts cool material sinking, zones warm material rising
- wind patterns
What is Jupiters main sources of energy
- internal heat built up during Jupiter’s formation is leaking out
- gravitational energy
- nuclear energy
Explain Jupiters interior
- atmosphere gets denser and denser towards its interior
- gaseous hydrogen
- liquid hydrogen
- liquid metallic hydrogen (generates large magnetic field)
- rocky core (15 times earths mass)
What are the four Galilean Moons?
(still Jupiter)
- Io
- Europa
- Ganymede
- Calisto
Describe Io
- closest moon to Jupiter
- covered in active volcanoes
- tidal forces from jupiter and other moons keep lo interior heated and liquid
Describe Europa
- houses liquid water a few km under its icy surface
- scars on europa believed to be caused by rising warmed ice
Describe Ganymede
- largest satellite in the solar system
- larger than mercury
What is Galileo Regio
- Ganymedes largest feature is a huge dark circular region called Galileo Regio
- shows deep “rocky frozen waves”
Describe Calisto
- a huge asteroid impact still marks the surface of calisto
- faded rings on surface were the result of a huge impact
How many other Asteroid like moons does Jupiter have
- at least 72 others
- metis (closer than io to Jupiter)
- adrastea (closer than io to Jupiter)
- thebe
- amalthea
What did voyager 1 find on jupiter
- dilute ringlets
Explain Jupiters Magnetic field
- two toroidal (bagel) shaped regions of trapped solar wind particles (similar to van allen belts)
What was the last planet known to ancient astronomers
Saturn
How is Jupiter and Saturn similar
- they both have bands of belts and zones
- there is much less contrast between the belts and zones on saturn
- very little swirling structure in saturns clouds
What was Saturn named after
- Cronus
- its roman
Explain the two storms merging on saturn
- storms and hurricanes stronger in the southern hemisphere
- there are two separate storms on saturn that eventually merge
- there is a region in the south pole where clouds are lined up along a hexagon, strong lightening is usual in this region
- storm of bigger suns
What is the main difference between the interiors of Jupiter and Saturn
- saturn does not convert as much of it’s hydrogen into liquid
- less mass
Who discovered Saturns rings? When?
- Galileo (1610) saw the rings though they disappeared when he next went to observe them , did not publish his findings
- 1655, Christian Huygens described them as a disk surrounding saturn
Do the rings ever touch Saturn
no they are completely detached
Why cant Saturns rings be flat solid objects
- because they would be destroyed by the rotation tidal force
Do all ringlets have their own orbit
yes and they have their own speed to
- ringlets closer to the planet move faster and the father ringlets move slower
What are Saturns rings made out of
- icy particles that form the “solid” portions of saturns rings (rocks covered with ice)
- these clumps are continuously forming and dispersing
- the rings themselves are about 10 meters to 1 km think
Why can we see saturns rings with a telescope
because they are covered with pure ice they are highly reflective
- they reflect light like a mirror
How come saturns rings “disappear” and why Galileo didnt see them
- at some points in the orbit we see the full face of the rings and sometimes the rings disappear when we see them edge on
What is the width of Saturns ring system
200,000 km
What are the apparent gaps in saturns ring system
- these gaps in the rings contain even more ringlets
- Cassini and encke division
What is Saturns moon
Titan
Who discovered Titan, What is special about its atmosphere?
- one of saturns moons
- discovered by Christian Huygens In 1665
- its atmosphere is three times as thick as earths and composed on nitrogen and a variety of carbon-hydrogen compounds which are actually components of oil
- only moon with thick and dense atmosphere
- rocky
What is the very ambition mission
the molecules in titans atmosphere appeared naturally without any intervention of biological activity
- this created speculation about potential origin of primitive forms of life on titan
What is the Cassini/ Huygens mission
- NASA and ESA collaborative mission to explore saturn and titan
Why is Titan Interesting?
- the presence of methane: UV sunlight could produce complex organic molecules
- it was recognized that Titan’s atmosphere might chemically represent the early earth atmosphere
Titans Atmosphere
- contains volcanoes, organic sediments, rivers, lake, fog , condensate haze
Explain Uranus’s Unusual seasons
- Uranus axis of rotation is tilted so steeply that it lies nearly in the plane of its orbit,
- Seasons on Uranus are unusual
- very long summers and winters
What are the three regions of Urnaus and Neptunes Interiors
- terrestrial core surrounded by liquid water mantel, surrounded by liquid helium and hydrogen
- thin and dilute atmospheres
How were Unranus’ rings discovered
- star occultation (passes infront of another)
- there are three partial eclipse where time didnt disappear , the light of the star was just dimmed or blocked by the rings
What is Triton
- Neptunes Largest moon
- might hide a water ocean under this thick layer of ice
What is the name of the first asteroid and who discovered it
- called Ceres
- discovered by Giuzeppe Piazzi
Where is the Asteroid belt
- between mars and jupiters orbits
- the asteroids belt never crosses the earths orbit
What is the Kuiper Belt
- region of our solar system beyond our main planets
- between neptunes and sun
- far larger than the asteroid belt, 20 times as wide
What is the closest Trans-neptunian object to earth
- pluto
made a TNO in 1931 - pluto has 3 moons
Charon, hydra and nix
New Horizons Space Probe
- took very high resolution pics of pluto and charon
What is a comet
- an icy small solar system body that when passing close to the sun, warms and begins to evolve gasses
- processes called outgassing
Where does the word comet come from
- greek
- wearing long hair
The structure of a comet
- nucleus: solid core structure composed of rock, dust, water, ice, frozen gases
- coma: water and dust, create a thin atmosphere around the comet by solar radiation and solar
wind - gas tail: light single ions which gain high speeds
- Dust tail: tiny particles which move significantly slower
What caused the Wolfe Creek Crater
asteroid
300,000 years old
- 60 m deep
What is the Manicouagan Crater
- oldest known impact craters visible on earth
- Quebec
- contains a annular lake called Manicouagan Reservoir
- result from 5 km diameter asteroid
What is a meteoroid
- small rocky or metallic body in outer space
- sig smaller than asteroid
What is a meteor
- shooting star
- falling star
- glowing meteoroid, comet or asteroid through the earths atmosphere
What is a Meteorite
- solid piece of debris from a meteoroid that survives its passage through the earths atmosphere and impact with the earths surface
What is the Oort Cloud
- hypothetical spherical cloud of comets which may lie 50,000 AU or 1 LY from the sun
- billions of comets
How many planets are confirmed outside or our solar system
more than 4000 confirmed exoplanets
