Download the outer solar system

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE OUTER SOLAR
SYSTEM
Dr. Adriana Ocampo
Somewhere on the sea
March 2015
OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM
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OVERVIEW
•  The Gas Giants
•  Voyager: the grand tour
•  Jupiter: why is so unique?
•  Saturn: why does it have so many rings?
•  Uranus: why is it call the sideway planet?
•  Neptune
•  New Horizons, Pluto, and KBO
PLANETARY TILT CONTROLS WEATHER AND PROPERTIES
Methane in the stratospheres of the giant planets plays the role that O3 does in Earth's
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stratosphere and absorption of UV sunlight by CH4 heats the stratospheres of the four gas giant planets.
GAS GIANT SIZE COMPARISON
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VOYAGER 1 AND 2: GRAND TOUR
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VOYAGER 1 AND 2: RECOGNIZANCE OF THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM
•  The family portrait of Voyager 1 was the first ever family photo
of the solar system and,
•  is the source of the famous “Pale Blue Dot” photograph of
Earth.
•  The portrait is, in actuality, a composite image of 60
photographs obtained on February 14, 1990 from a distance of
6 billion kilometers from Earth –
•  the farthest photograph ever taken of the solar system – at
approximately 32-degrees above the elliptic plane.
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JUPITER: THE GIANT@ 5AU: WHICH PLANET FORM FIRST?
The 13 MJ mass limit is widely taken as the
boundary between planets and brown dwarfs.
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JUPITER’S GANYMEDE: LARGEST MOON IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
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THE SOUND OF JUPITER
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JUNO: MISSION TO JUPITER
Juno polar orbiter, launched in August 2011, will
measure Jupiter's gravitational field with sufficient
accuracy to decide whether or not a core exists.
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JUNO: EXPLORING JUPITER
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SATURN@ 9.5AU: LORD OF THE RINGS (40,000MPH)
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Saturn1 day= 10 hrs days, 750 times de size of earth,1 year= 25
years to orbit the sun, it has 48 moons
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SATURN LARGEST MOON: TITAN
2005
•  Titan’s atmosphere is likely older than that of Saturn
•  Tholins (muddy substance produced after an electric discharge)
or organic aerosol were found
•  Tholin is a by-product of N and CH4 when baked by radiation
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TITAN THRU CASSINI-HUYGEN’S EYES
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TITAN LAKES ARE CHANGING
Largest reservoir of hydrocarbons
in the Solar System
HYDROCARBON LAKES
Waves?
LIQUID METHANE
260 MILES
6 INCHES
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URANUS@ 19AU
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URANUS@19AU: 10 THINGS-TO-KNOW
•  Uranus: The Sideways Planet (discovered 1781)
•  Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun at a distance of
about 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion miles) or 19.19 AU.
•  One day on Uranus takes about 17 hours (the time it takes for
Uranus to rotate or spin once). Uranus makes a complete
orbit around the sun (a year in Uranian time) in about 84
Earth years.
•  Uranus is an ice giant. Most (80 percent or more) of the
planet's mass is made up of a hot dense fluid of "icy"
materials – water (H2O), methane (CH4). and ammonia (NH3)
– above a small rocky core.
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URANUS@19AU: 10 THINGS-TO-KNOW
•  Uranus has 27 moons. Uranus' moons are named after
characters from the works of William Shakespeare and
Alexander Pope.
•  Uranus has faint rings. The inner rings are narrow and dark and
the outer rings are brightly colored.
•  Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus.
•  Uranus cannot support life as we know it.
•  Like Venus, Uranus has a retrograde rotation (east to west).
Unlike any of the other planets, Uranus rotates on its side, which
means it spins horizontally.
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NEPTUNE@ 30AU
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NEPTUNE @30AU
•  Discovered Neptune in 1846
•  Twin to Uranus
•  Pressure inside Uranus and Neptune are not sufficient to make
hydrogen metallic
•  Abundance of methane and ammonia (which absorves at red visible
wavelengths ) gives the blue color
•  Water abundance on the giant planets still remains an open question
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NEW HORIZONS LAUNCH TO PLUTO JANUARY 19, 2006
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SCIENTIFIC PAYLOAD
Instruments:
Ø  REX radio science & radiometry
Ø  RALPH VIS/IR imaging & spectroscopy
Ø  ALICE UV imaging spectroscopy
Ø  LORRI High-resolution imager
Ø  SWAP plasma spectrometer
Ø  PEPSSI energetic particle spectrometer
Ø  SDC EPO Student Dust Counter
PLUTO: THE MISFIT@ 30-50AU
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LONE MISFIT?
The Old View:
4 Terrestrial Planets
4 Giant Planets
1 Misfit Pluto
MISFIT NOT,
PLUTO’S ABOUND!
The New View:
4 Terrestrial Planets
4 Giant Planets
Perhaps 1000 Dwarf Planets
LOTS OF PLANETS!
A RICH SATELLITE SYSTEM
P4=Kerberos
P5=Styx
ENCOUNTER GEOMETRY
Hydra
• 
• 
• 
• 
Charon-Earth
Occultation
14:20:09
15:00
Pluto-Earth
Occultation
12:52:30
Charon
14:00
13:00
Charon-Sun
Occultation
14:17:50
S/C trajectory time ticks: 10 min
Occultation: center time
Position and lighting at Pluto C/A
Distance relative to body center
Pluto
Sun!
Earth!
0.24°
12:00
Pluto-Sun
Occultation
12:51:28
Charon C/A
12:04:00
29,432 km Pluto C/A
13.87 km/s 11:50:00
13,695 km
13.78 km/s
11:00
Nix
New Horizons Trajectory
Orbit Period
a
Charon
6.4 d 19,571 km
Nix
24.9 d 48,675 km
Hydra 38.2 d 64,780 km
WHAT WILL WE FIND?
BEYOND PLUTO:
KBO 2017-2019
The Kuiper Belt is a discshaped region
•  of icy objects beyond
the orbit of Neptune -billions of kilometers
from our sun.
•  Pluto and Eris are the
best known of these icy
worlds.
•  There may be hundreds
more of these ice
dwarfs planets out
there
•  Oort cloud region of
long term comets
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NEW HORIZONS MISSION TO PLUTO
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YOU HAVE A DATE WITH PLUTO JULY 14, 2015
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