Download Week 4 Uranus Neptune and Pluto

Week 4 Day 1
• Before:
• Question of The Day
• During;
• PPT notes on Uranus
• After:
• 3-2-1
Week 4 Day 1
Question of The Day
• Which moon contains
nitrogen?
Week 4 Day 1
Uranus
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A gas giant
7th planet from the sun
3 billion Km. from Sun
Orbit is an ellipse –stretched circle
At first Uranus was named “Georgium Sidus”,
after George III (the King of England at the time).
• Uranus was eventually named after the Greek
god of the sky. The god Uranus was Saturn’s
father.
Uranus
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One Uranus year = 84 Earth yr.
One Uranus day=a little over 17 hr.
Uranus is a blue-green color
Small even when viewed through a telescope
Gases include: methane, hydrogen, helium
Core of melted rock
Core blends into a dirty ocean of water,
ammonia, and other elements
• Dirty ocean blends into clouds
Uranus
• Winds blow at over 400 MPH
• At least 15 moons
• largest, and furthest away, of Uranus’ moons are
Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon
• Moons are named after characters in the stories
of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope
• Remaining 10 small moons discovered by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986.
Uranus
• All the gas planets have
rings
• Rings of Uranus are very
faint
• Rings cannot be seen
from Earth
• Seem to be made of
larger chunks of very
dark, rocky material.
• Discovered by William
Herschel
• Uranus Special Features:
• lies on its side
• Thought to be result of
collision with something
• Spins vertically (north to
south)
Uranus
Special Features
• lies on side
– Thought to be result of collision with something
– Spins vertically (north to south)
Week 4 Day 2
• Before:
• Question of the Day
• During:
• PPT Notes on Neptune
• After:
• Exit Ticket
Week 4 Day 2
Question of The Day
• What was the first name given to
Uranus?
Week 4 Day 2
Neptune
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a gas giant
8th planet in our solar system
almost 4.5 billion km. from Sun
orbit almost a perfect circle
named after the Roman god of the sea
One Neptune year = 165 Earth years
One Neptune day = sixteen hours
Neptune
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almost 4 times the size of Earth
can be seen with a telescope
small central core of melted rock.
above center is extremely cold liquid
After the liquid is a top layer of gases (hydrogen,
helium, methane)
• Methane gives Neptune its blue-ish color
• Winds can blow as fast as 1000 MPH at the
planet’s equator
Neptune
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Neptune has 13 moons
Two can be seen from Earth
Triton– Neptune’s largest moon
Voyager space missions gave us our info on the moon.
The spacecraft sent back pictures of nitrogen “geysers”
erupting on Triton’s surface
• Neptune rings-- small, very dark clumps of rock --about
the size of a small car.
• Have a large amount of dust in the rings
• One of the rings has a twist in it.
Neptune
• Some sources say the astronomers Galle and d’Arrest
discovered Neptune on September 23, 1846, although
other sources say that it was Adams in 1846.
• Interesting fact --astronomers were looking for it
before it was known to exist.
• After William Herschel discovered Uranus,
astronomers noticed that Uranus’ orbit didn’t seem to
obey the laws of physics. Something was making
Uranus move in unexpected ways. Astronomers
decided that there must be another planet making
Uranus move and they then calculated where the new
planet might be.
Week 4 Day 3
• Before:
• Question of The Day
• During:
• PPT Notes on Pluto
• After:
• Exit Slip
Week 4 Day 3
Question of The Day
• How long is a Neptune day?
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Answer: day sixteen hours
A Planet or Not????
• In 2006 the International Astronomical Union
(IAU) demoted Pluto from a Planet to a Dwarf
Planet.
• Out of the 10,000 members only about 500
were at the meeting to vote on this decision.
• 237 voted to demote
• 157 voted to keep as a planet
What it takes to be a planet!!
• As defined by the IAU in August 2006
– Must orbit a sun
– Must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a
round ball
– Must have cleared other objects out of the way in
its orbital neighborhood
• To clear an orbit it must be able to pull the objects into
the planet itself or to sling-shot them around the planet
and into outer space
Pluto
• According to IAU, in 2006, Pluto did not meet third
criteria.
• New Horizons sent to Pluto
– A nine yr. trip
• New Horizons spacecraft arrived on Pluto in July 2015.
• Because of info. gathered by New Horizon, Plutos
right to be a planet was argued at IAU assembly in
August 2015.
Pluto
• Nothing decided in 2015
• Many people calling Pluto a planet again
• NASA’s Dawn space ship arrived on Ceres in March 2015
• Evidence gathered leads us to believe Ceres meets
planetary requirements.
– Ceres first discovered 1-1-1801—classified as planet
– Demoted to asteroid 1850
– Promoted to Dwarf Planet in 2006
• IAU 2016 assembly will decide weather or not these two
“Dwarf Planets” deserve to be reinstated as Planets!!
Week 4 Day3
Pluto
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a small planet
an outer planet
elliptical orbit
average distance from the Sun --6 billion km.
Origins of name unknown—Possible origins
– Pluto is the Roman god of darkness and the underworld.
– Pluto is always in darkness.
– It may have also have been given its name from the fact
that its symbol “PL” are the initials of Percival Lowell, who
founded the observatory where Pluto’s discoverer, Mr.
Tombaugh, worked.
Pluto
• Comparison to Earth-ping pong ball to soccer
ball
• Earth’s moon is larger than Pluto.
• can not be seen with a normal telescope from
Earth
• Pluto is the only planet in the solar system
that has not been explored with a spacecraft.
• Discovered 1930 -- Clyde Tombaugh
Pluto
Hypotheses
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dark frozen world
made of a mixture of rocks and several kinds of “ices”
most of the ices are frozen methane and ammonia
surface temp. are less than -200 degrees Celsius
atmosphere to thin to support life
one tiny moon– Charon
– discovered 1978
– half the size of Pluto
– No other moon in the solar system is as large, when compared
to the planet it revolves around.
– Pluto and Charon are so similar in size that some astronomers
think of them as a double planet.
Pluto
Special Features
• orbit is tilted
• Looking at the solar system from an “edge”, most
of the planets are in a line like a table top, with
the Sun in the middle. This line, or plane, is called
the ecliptic. The rest of the planets’ orbits stay on
this plane. However, Pluto’s orbit is tilted at an
angle to the rest of the solar system.
• Pluto spins in the opposite direction from Earth.
This means that the dim Sun would rise in the
west and set in the east.
Week 4 Day 4
• Before:
• Question of The Day
• During:
• Review
• After:
• Mini-Q
Week 4 Day 4
Question of The Day
• When was Pluto’s moon
discovered?
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Answer: discovered 1978
Week 4 Day 5
• Before:
• Question of The Day
• During:
• Review
• After:
• Mini Test
Week 4 Day 5
Question of The Day
• Which two planets spin in the
opposite direction of Earth?
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Answer: Pluto and Uranus