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Planets
The terrestrial planets and
some large moons
The Jovian Planets
(Gas Giants)
Mercury Facts
Largest range of temperature
Moon like surface
Closest to the sun
No atmosphere
Mercury has a
cratered
surface
Why are there so many craters on
planets like Mercury and so few on
Earth?
Venus Facts
Hottest
surface
temperature
o
(over 800 C)
Dense cloudy
atmosphere
Similar to Earth
in size and
surface
features
Tremendous
surface
pressure
Runaway greenhouse effect
Rains sulfuric
acid
Earth
Facts
Moderate
temperatures
Only planet
known to
support life
Large
amounts of
liquid water
Plate Tectonics
Substantial
Oxygen
atmosphere
Active
Plate
tectonics
Mars viewed from
Hubble
Seasonal
dust storms
Polar ice caps
Very thin
carbon
dioxide
atmosphere
volcanoes
Giant Canyon
Olympus Mons: largest mountain in solar system
Evidence of running
water and erosion
Surface from
Viking Lander
Jupiter – largest
planet in the solar
system
Strong magnetic field
Mostly
composed of
hydrogen and
helium
great red spot
fastest rotation
The great red
spot is a giant
hurricane
Colorful bands run horizontal
across Jupiter’s cloud tops
Jupiter would have been a
small star had it 10 to 20
times more mass
A solid
hydrogen
and rock
core is at the
center
A few
thousand km
below the
cloud tops
the hydrogen
turns to liquid
Shadow
of moon
Io
Saturn- the most elaborate rings
It’s the lowest
density of any
planet and would
float in water
Composition very similar to Jupiter
Saturn’s rings are extremely complex
and kept in line by shepherd moons
Because of it’s
near 90 degree tilt,
Uranus has
strange seasons
Like Saturn, Uranus has a large
number of moons
Neptune was discovered due to
gravitational discrepancies in Uranus’
orbit in 1846 by Johann Galle
Neptune, like
the other gas
giants, is
primarily
hydrogen
and helium
Great dark spot
Neptune as seen from
it’s large icy moon Triton
Pluto and it’s moon Charon
Pluto is now a “dwarf planet”
It has the most
eccentric orbit
It’s orbit is most
inclined to the EarthSun orbit plane
It is the coldest ! only 37
degrees above absolute 0
Other Solar System Objects
would include
asteroids
comets
And Kuiper Belt
Objects (KBO’s)found past the orbit of
Neptune
As seen from Pluto
Charon
There are over
700,000 known,
some almost as
large as Pluto
Comets can be
thought of as a dirty
snowball that orbit
the sun in very
elliptical orbits
They are composed of
rock and ice (mostly
water ice but some dry
ice and other frozen
gases)
typical comet orbit
Comets come from the Oort Cloud
Pluto’s orbit
Sun
Oort Cloud
Oort Cloud
Kuiper Belt
The gravity from a passing star
can send a comet in towards the sun
Asteroids
Most asteroids orbit between
Mars and Jupiter
Meteors come
from either a
comet or asteroid
Meteor (shooting star)
Larger meteors are called
fireballs
Fireball seen over London Bridge
When a meteor (shooting star)
survives it’s burn through the
Earth’s atmosphere and reaches
the ground it is called a
meteorite
Rocky
meteorite
from a
comet
Martian
meteorite
Iron
meteorite
from an
asteroid
When meteors
hit earth an
impact crater
results
Barringer Crater
This impact occurred 50 thousand
years ago in the Arizona desert
The Big One hit 65 million years ago
Any living thing within 2500
miles would have been
vaporized in a 1 mile high wall
of fire
A 1000ft. high tidal wave would
have swept around the world