Download - The Outer Planets
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The Outer Planets
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The Inner Planets to Scale
3,031 mi 7,521 mi 7,926 mi 4,222 mi
5.4 g/cm3 5.2 g/cm3 5.5 g/cm3 3.9 g/cm^3
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The Outer Planets to Scale
88,700 mi 75,000 mi 31,700 mi 30,200 mi
1.3 g/cm3 0.7 g/cm3 1.3 g/cm3 1.6 g/cm3
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Outer Planet Similarities
• All are tens of thousands of miles across– Much larger than the inner planets
• All are made of gas - hydrogen and helium– No rocky surface like the inner planets
• All are not very dense (b/c made of gas)• Why do the outer planets share these
similarities?• Why don’t the outer planets have more in
common with the inner planets?
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Jupiter
• Largest planet• Colorful cloud bands• Rapid rotation
(9h50m)• -250°F at cloud tops• Great Red Spot
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Great Red Spot
• Hurricane-like storm, fueled by heat inside of Jupiter
• Large enough to cover 3 Earths
• Discovered by Galileo nearly 400 years ago– Why can it last so long
compared with hurricanes on the Earth?
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Saturn
• Least dense planet - Would float on water!
• Bulges because of rapid rotation (10h30m)
• Large, broad rings
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Saturn’s Rings
• Made of countless small chunks of ice and rock– Why don’t the chunks
combine to form a moon?
– Why doesn’t Earth have rings?
• 170,000 miles wide, <1 mile thick
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Uranus
• Discovered by accident (1781)
• Blue-green color from methane in its atmosphere
• -350°F at cloud tops• Almost featureless;
little weather– Why might Uranus
lack distinctive weather patterns?
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Uranus’ Axis
• Axis tilted 98° from its orbit• Orbits Sun every 84y• How would these factors affect its seasons?
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What’s Wrong with Uranus?
• Following its discovery, astronomers calculated its orbit
• Uranus mysteriously speeded up, then slowed down– Why might Uranus
have deviated from its calculated orbit?
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Neptune
• Discovered at its predicted position (1846)
• Blue color from methane• -370°F at cloud tops• Great Dark Spot in
1989, but not 1994– How is this different from
the Great Red Spot?– Why is its weather
different from Uranus? Jupiter?
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The S.S. Family Portait