Uranus

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Uranus
William Herschel - 1781 Visible to the naked eye
(barely) Earth Observations reveal tilted on
side has a ring system
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Uranus visited by Voyager 2 in 1986
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Wait a minute! Clouds on Uranus! Whats
happening? Seasonal variations!
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Rock
Compressed water, methane, ammonia ocean
Liquid H, He
Magnetic field is tilted and off axis
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Rings
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Uranus Satellites - 27
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Small, icy worlds
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Miranda - The Fractured Moon
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Huge Cliff!
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Strange patterns Discoloration Why?
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Neptune
1846 - An Englishman, a Frenchman and a German
walked into a bar and...
John Couch Adams
Urbain Le Verrier
Johann Galle
Co-discoverers
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Voyager 2 flew by in August 1989
Similar to Uranus Composition Mass,
radius Cloud structures Magnetic fields More
active atmosphere
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Great Dark Spot Analogous to the Great Red Spot
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1998
2005
No Great Dark Spot (Guess it wasnt so
great!) Other spots seen - seasonal variations
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Rings
Ring Arcs
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Neptunes Moons
13 known satellites Small icy worlds Heavily
cratered
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Triton - The Geyser World
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Geysers erupt gas (nitrogen and methane) and
methane ice Tritons unusual orbit - tidal heated
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Beyond Neptune...
1930 - Pluto Discovered 1951 - Kuiper Belt
proposed 1992 - Discovery of another object
beyond Neptune Kuiper Belt Objects Trans-Neptun
ian Objects 1,000 known (so far), 100,000 may
exist 30 - few hundred AU
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Pluto
Discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh Moon
(Charon) discovered in 1978 by Robert Christy 2
more satellites recently discovered (2005)
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Observations of Pluto
Small, icy Has an atmosphere sometimes
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Is it a planet?
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Eris (aka 2003 UB313) Sedna
Bigger than Pluto! Has a satellite Is this a
planet? What about Sedna?
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What about the other KBOs? Are they planets?
Eris