Download The Planets - Giants video questions

ASTRONOMY
JOVIAN PLANETS VIDEO
GIANTS
THE PLANETS
MURCHISON
1) In 1964 the spacecraft ________________________flew by Mars. The spacecraft barely made it there.
2) Professor Gary Flandro was the student at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was given the task of working
on probes for the ___________________ _____________________.
3) The first thing to be determined was when the planets would be in a __________________ to reach them.
4) The trick is to fire the rocket so you can get to ______________________, use Jupiter’s gravity, that propels
you to ______________________, Saturn propels you to ________________________.
5) The planetary alignment necessary for the Voyager missions happens about once every _________ years. The
last time the planets were aligned in such a manner, ___________________ __________________ was President
of the United States.
6) Around the globe, giant antennae were built, The ______________ _______________ Network, to
communicate with probes across billions of miles.
7) The asteroid belt is a belt of rocks between Mars and Jupiter. Voyager would have only one chance, so to less
elaborate probes were sent ahead to test the way. Pioneer _____ and _____ were launched to Jupiter and Saturn.
8) Since the 1950’s radio emissions had been detected from Jupiter indicating intense radiation around the planet.
9) The man whose task it was to investigate this was _____________ ________ ________________ who had
discovered bands of radiation around Earth with the very first American satellite.
10) The radiation belts of Jupiter turned out to be ______________ times more powerful than those on Earth.
Jupiter’s magnetosphere stretches more than 7 million miles from the planet.
11) Pioneer 10 discovered than Jupiter’s magnetosphere is the largest object in the Solar System.
12) If it were visible in the sky, Jupiter’s magnetosphere would appear brighter and larger than the ___________.
13) The Voyager spacecraft carry a golden disk with images of Earth
14) The probe was still ______ million miles from Jupiter when it sent back the images everyone was waiting for.
15) Voyager revealed an atmosphere of _________________ and helium gas whose clouds were much more
dynamic than imagined.
Page
1
16) Voyager discovered that Jupiter gives off 2 times as much heat as it receives from the Sun, suggesting that the
core must be __________. Scientists now believe that the gases compressed until they become a
_________________ liquid. This hot core could be the powerhouse that drives Jupiter’s ______________ and like
a dynamo, generates the enormous ________________ field around the planet.
ASTRONOMY
JOVIAN PLANETS VIDEO
MURCHISON
17) Io is more _____________________ active than Earth. As Io orbits Jupiter, it is constantly brushing against the
magnetosphere. The little moon builds up a huge electrical charge which discharges onto Jupiter, a continuous
flow of 3 million amps, causing storms on the planet.
18) Europa has a surface of _________. Underneath the ice scientists believe there are oceans of liquid water.
19) Ganymede is larger than the planet ________________
20) Callisto is covered with ________________. The icy crust preserved a record of a violent age when meteorites
crashed onto its surface.
21) For early astronomers, Saturn was the _______________ planet in the Solar System.
22) The first to observe the rings was Giovanni Cassini, who observed a flat disk with just one gap
23) Voyager discovered the rings were broken up into ____________ rings. There were gaps and other
phenomenon that were not undistorted. Voyager 2 had to be reprogrammed quickly to get a closer look at the
rings.
24) Some rings of Saturn are held in place by tiny moons called ______________________
25) Strange features called _________________, dark patches of dust that stuck up above the rings. Professor
Carolyn Poroco discovered that the spokes came and went with a certain period. It was found that the spokes
followed Saturn’s __________________ ___________________ as it rotated around the planet.
26) Saturn’s rings possibly formed from the destruction of a _______________________ and the debris was
spread out into the rings. Craters on the other satellites of Saturn provide evidence that the moons were being
pummeled early on in the formation of the planet.
27) Voyager discovered that Saturn was made of the same __________________ as Jupiter. Saturn is smaller and
colder than Jupiter and generates less heat from within and receives less energy from the Sun.
28) The winds on Saturn are faster than on Jupiter, traveling at _______________ miles per hour. Saturn’s largest
moon, Titan, is the only moon in the Solar System with a thick atmosphere. Voyager’s cameras could not
penetrate the orange haze to see what lay beneath.
29) Traveling at ___________________ miles per hour it took Voyager 5 years to reach Uranus from Saturn
30) Voyager operated at _____ billion miles from Earth at Uranus. With very dim sunlight the cameras required
very long exposures. Longer exposures could lead to smeared images because of how fast the spacecraft was
moving. The spacecraft had to be programmed to compensate for longer exposures.
Page
32) Uranus’s atmosphere is composed mainly of smaller, colder clouds make of _________________ and
ammonia.
2
31) Uranus is different from Jupiter and Saturn in that it has no internal ____________ source. Jupiter and Saturn
are still radiating more heat than they receive from the Sun, making the atmosphere much blander.
ASTRONOMY
JOVIAN PLANETS VIDEO
MURCHISON
33) Uranus’s tiny moon Miranda has a strange terrain suggesting the terrain was the result of a collision. The
pieces stuck together resulting in the surface Voyager observed. Perhaps it was just such a collision that knocked
Uranus over on its ________________ during the early days of the Solar System.
34) Neptune is 3 billion miles from Earth. The challenge with Neptune was that the scientists had to know within
____ second of when they would fly over the North Pole of Neptune. After _______ years in flight, Voyager
arrived at Neptune.
35) Neptune had a Great Dark Spot, clouds in its atmosphere and other features not found on Uranus.
36) Neptune turned out to have the strongest _________________ of all the giant planets. The gas giant furthest
from the Sun defied expectations. You would expect the further you get from the Sun, the less energy there is to
drive the winds, the winds would be slower. The reason the winds were faster was a lack of _________________.
The wind started and just continued. The lack of energy is the reason for the lack of turbulence.
37) Neptune’s atmosphere was much more dynamic than Uranus’s but made of the same gasses and ices. The last
two giants are very different from their gaseous cousins. Uranus and Neptune are not gas giants, but ice giants.
38) Voyager discovered incomplete rings around Neptune called ____________ ______________.
39) Neptune’s moon Triton was the last encounter for Voyager. Triton is the size of _______________. If it orbited
around the Sun it would be called a planet. Triton is a retrograde orbit which told scientists that it likely formed
somewhere else in the Universe and was _________________ by Neptune.
40) Triton is the coldest surface encountered in the Solar System, ________o above absolute zero. Triton is so cold
that nitrogen, which forms most of the atmosphere on Earth, is frozen as solid ice to the surface of Triton. The
polar caps of Triton are frozen nitrogen. Even though the cold conditions, Voyager found nitrogen geysers on
Triton, miles high. Even the furthest regions of our Solar System there is ____________________ activity.
41) As the planets drifted out of alignment, they drifted out of reach, making it unlikely that they will be visited
again in our lifetime.
42) In 1994, the Galileo spacecraft revisited Jupiter. It found fresh surfaces on Io created by sulfurous lava. Europa
was covered in ridges and chasms. New details were found on the surfaces of Ganymede and Callisto.
43) Cassini was launched on 1997 and spent 4 years imaging Saturn, it rings, and satellites. (More info found at
the NASA website and the Universe Video “Saturn”).
Page
3
44) In 2015 Voyager 1 will be ____________ times as far from the Sun as Earth, about 12 billion miles from Earth.