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History of Solar System formation and evolution hypotheses wikipedia , lookup
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Name______________________________ Teacher___________Period_______Date_________ The Outer Planets (Gas Giants) & Pluto (not a planet) Place a checkmark in the box if the outer planet matches that characteristic. You may have more than 1 checkmark for each characteristic. Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Atmosphere is mainly hydrogen & helium √ √ √ √ Contains clouds and/or storms √ √ √ √ Contains methane in its atmosphere making it appear blue √ Diameter is 11 times Earth’s diameter √ Does not have a solid surface √ √ √ √ √ Four large moons are named Tethys, Iapetus, Dione & Rhea √ Four times the diameter of Earth Galileo probe explored here √ Has a deep atmosphere √ √ √ √ Has a partly solid core of rock, ice and frozen CO2 √ √ √ √ Has or had a spot on it that behaves like Earth’s hurricanes √ Has rings √ Its moons have lava flows √ Largest moon is named Titan Largest moon is Triton √ √ √ √ √ √ √ Largest planet in the solar system √ √ Less dense than water, so it could float in water √ Rotates from top to bottom √ Second largest planet in the solar system The four biggest moons are named Io, Europa, Ganymede & Callisto √ √ Twice as far from the sun as Saturn Voyager 1 probe explored here √ √ Voyager 2 probe explored here √ √ √ √ Pluto Since our book was published, some exciting discoveries have been made in the region that lies outside of the orbit of Neptune. The region is called the Kuiper Belt and is the home to many dwarf planets, including Pluto and Eris, which was only discovered in 2005. Eris is bigger than Pluto! In 2006, the International Astronomical Union met to define what a planet is, and because Pluto did not fit the 3 criteria, it was deemed a dwarf planet. The three criteria of the IAU for a full-sized planet are: 1. It is in orbit around the Sun. 2. It has sufficient mass to assume a nearly round shape. 3. It has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit. Pluto meets only two of these criteria, losing out on the third. In all the billions of years it has lived there, it has not managed to clear its neighborhood. This means that the planet has become gravitationally dominant -- there are no other bodies of comparable size other than its own satellites or those otherwise under its gravitational influence, in its vicinity in space. Don’t ask your teacher if Pluto is a planet! Pluto has not been a “planet” since you have been in school.