Chapter 7 The Outer Planets

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Chapter 7 The Outer Planets
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What do you think?

• Is Jupiter a failed star or almost a star?
• What is Jupiters Great Red Spot?
• Does Jupiter have continents and oceans?
• Are the rings of Saturn solid ribbons?

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Besides being the largest planet, Jupiter is
probably best known for its Great Red Spot - a
hurricane-like storms that has been observed ever
since the invention of the telescope.
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Jupiters rotation helps create colorful global
weather patterns
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Jupiters rotation helps create colorful global
weather patterns
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Jupiters Chemistry

• 86 hydrogen
• 13 helium
• 1 stuff
• methane CH4
• ammonia NH3
• water vapor H2O

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The light zones are regions of hotter, rising
gas, while the dark belts are regions of cooler,
descending gas.
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Jupiters interior has three distinct regions

• Upper atmosphere of clouds and gas
• Middle layer of liquid metallic hydrogen
• Small rocky protoplanet core

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Pieces of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragments
collided with Jupiter in 1994
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Jupiter is orbited by four large moons and tens
of small ones
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Ios surface is sculpted by volcanic activity
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Ios surface is sculpted by volcanic activity
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Europa may harbor liquid water below its surface
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Ganymede is larger that Mercury
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Callisto wears the scars of a huge asteroid impact
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Saturns banded surface and layered interior are
similar to those of Jupiter
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Saturns spectacular rings are composed of
fragments of ice and ice-coated rock
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Moons Pandora and Prometheus act as shepherd
moons and keep the F ring to a band about 100km
wide because of gravitational effects.
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Dust spokes in Saturns rings
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Titan is Saturns largest moon
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Titan has a thick, opaque atmosphere rich in
nitrogen, methane and other hydrocarbons
(including ethane, acetylene, ethylene, and
propane)
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Uranus sports a hazy atmosphere with few clouds
A system of rings and satellites revolves around
Uranus
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Uranus odd moon Miranda
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Uranus tilt gives it very exaggerated seasons
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Uranus and Neptune have similar interiors
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Neptunes Rings
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Neptunes largest moon, Tritan, was probably
captured by Neptunes gravity
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And then, there is one planet unlike any of the
others ..
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Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh by
comparing photographs taken a few days apart.
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Pluto and its moon, Charon, are about the same
size
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What did you think?

• Is Jupiter a failed star or almost a star?
• Jupiter has 75 times too little mass to shine as
  a star.
• What is Jupiters Great Red Spot?
• The Great Red Spot is a long-lived hurricanelike
  storm.
• Does Jupiter have continents and oceans?
• Jupiter is completely enveloped in a sea of
  liquid hydrogen and helium
• Are the rings of Saturn solid ribbons?
• Saturns rings are all composed of thin, closely
  spaced ringlets consisting of particles of ice
  and ice-coated rocks. If they were solid
  ribbons, Saturns gravitational tidal force would
  tear them apart.

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Self-Check

• 1 Name and describe the visible features in the
  Jovian atmosphere.
• 2 Sketch and label the major elements of the
  ring system of Saturn and describe its
  composition.
• 3 Compare and contrast the atmospheres of
  Jupiter and Saturn.
• 4 Compare and contrast the internal structures
  of Jupiter and Saturn with that of Uranus and
  Neptune.
• 5 Compare and contrast the ring systems of the
  outer planets.
• 6 Compare and contrast the atmospheric features
  of Uranus and Neptune.
• 7 Describe the geologic activity observed on Io
  and explain the probable origin of this activity.
• 8 Compare and contrast the inner and outer
  Galilean satellites in terms of internal
  structure and surface features.
• 9 List the gases that compose Titans atmosphere
  and discuss the possibility of the existence of
  life forms there.
• 10 Compare and contrast the Voyager 2
  observations of Triton with those of Titan in
  terms of atmospheric composition and surface
  features identified.
• 11 Describe the physical properties of Pluto in
  the context of planetary classification.