Download STUDY QUESTIONS #13 THE OUTER PLANETS 1. What

STUDY QUESTIONS #13
THE OUTER PLANETS
1. What characteristics about Pluto make it stand out as being very different from the other planets?
2. What evidence is there that Uranus and Neptune experienced an extremely massive impact in their
distant past?
3. What is the Kuiper Belt?
4. What makes most meteors burn up in the atmosphere and never hit the ground?
5. What is the cause of yearly meteor showers, for example, the Perseids, the Leonids, and the Orionids?
6. How large is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt?
7. What is the origin of the asteroid belt?
8. What role has Jupiter played in helping life get started on earth?
9. What is an Apollo asteroid?
10. What role does the sun play in how the comet appears to us as it comes through our solar system?
11. What is needed for the presence of a magnetic field around a planet?
12. What is the Oort Cloud and about how far out is it? (Pluto is about 40 AU from the sun)
13. Label on the drawing above the following parts of a comet: coma, nucleus, gas and dust tail.
14. The drawing below shows the head of the comet as it passes through the solar system. The arrows on
the left indicate its direction of motion. On each position of the comet, draw the tail, paying attention
to the length and direction. (the black dot is the earth)
14. In terms of pressure and motion, describe the belts and zones of Jupiter.
15. Io, the closest of Jupiter's large moons, orbits around Jupiter every two days (our moon takes 28 days
to orbit earth and Io's path around Jupiter is much larger than the path of our moon around earth).
Why does Io move so fast
16. What are the moons of Saturn made of and why are there spaces in the rings?
17. Jupiter has an enormous magnetic field. What does that tell us about the interior of Jupiter in general?
What, specifically, is the source of Jupiter's magnetic field?
18. The larger the body, the longer it takes to cool inside. Callisto, a moon of Jupiter's, is much larger
than Io. However, Callisto has a cold interior and Io has a hot interior. How can this be?
19. Jupiter is a gas giant and Venus is a rocky planet. On which planet is the atmospheric pressure higher
and why? (although Jupiter does not have a solid "surface," it does have an ocean of liquid H.)