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Today is Thursday, May 30, 2013 • Homework: – Rocket designs due tomorrow – Last Homework Packet (LHP) due Monday • Warm Up: – Get ready for a peek at the Inner Planets! Solar System The Inner Planets Mercury • Almost no atmosphere, so it’s surface temperatures are extreme • Core is ¾ iron • Small, rocky planet • Many craters Venus • Thick layer of hot clouds of poisonous gas • Clouds trap heat • Clouds reflect sunlight, making it bright Earth • Solid and rock • ¾ of surface covered with water and ice • Thin layer of air around it Mars • Rocky planet covered with red, dusty soil, due to iron • Thin atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide • Polar ice caps of dry ice and frozen water • Extinct volcanoes This image shows the south polar cap of Mars as it appears near its minimum size of about 400 kilometers (249 miles). It consists mainly of frozen carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide cap never melts completely. The ice appears reddish due to dust that has been incorporated into the cap. This image is an oblique view of the north polar cap of Mars. Unlike the south polar cap, the north polar cap probably consists of water-ice. Asteroid Belt • Region that contains small solar system bodies Closing it up….. • Tell your shoulder partner two facts about one of the Inner Planets. Today is Friday, May 31, 2013 • Homework: – Rocket designs due RIGHT NOW – please turn them in. – Last Homework Packet (LHP) due Monday • Warm Up: – Get ready for a peek at the Outer Planets! Solar System The Outer Planets (Gas Giants) Jupiter • Gas planet – made mostly of hydrogen, helium and other gases • Largest planet This gives you an idea of relative sizes in our Solar System…. This true color mosaic of Jupiter was constructed from images taken by the narrow angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft on December 29, 2000. It is the most detailed global color portrait of Jupiter ever produced. The mosaic is composed of 27 images: nine images were required to cover the entire planet in a tic-tac-toe pattern • Has powerful lightning storms Jupiter has 63 moons and a very faint ring Auroras on Jupiter Saturn • Has the most rings, which are made of rock, dust and ice • Least dense planet in the Solar System (would float in water) Surface of Saturn similar to Jupiter. High speed winds and storms. The Great White Spot, Dec 5, 2010. Saturn experiences storms every few years. Storm encompasses an area that’s about 8x’s the surface area of Earth The Great White Spot, Feb. 25, 2011. The storm now has a tail that has wrapped around the planet. The Cassini spacecraft captured this natural color view of Saturn almost a month after the planet's August 2009 equinox. The shadow cast on the planet by the rings remains narrow. Mimas can be seen as a speck at lower left. The shadow of Saturn's largest moon darkens a huge portion of the gas giant planet. Titan (5,150 km, or 3,200 mi across) is not pictured here, but its shadow is elongated across Saturn's upper atmosphere. On December 25, 2009, Cassini was on the dark side of Saturn and took this image looking toward the moon Enceladus, seen at top, beyond the planet and its rings. Light passing through Saturn's atmosphere creates the bright arc seen from the top to the bottom of the image. At bottom center, the light passing through is blocked by shadows from the rings The moon Prometheus creates an intricate pattern of perturbation in Saturn's F ring while the moon Prometheus can be seen between the thin F ring and the A ring in the middle left of the image. Another view of Enceladus' southern ice plumes, seen on November 21, 2009. The moon's cryovolcanic activity was first discovered by Cassini in 2005, and continues to be a focus of research. Primarily made up of water vapor, the plumes also contain trace amounts of nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, propane, ethane, and acetylene Enceladus continues to spew ice into space, seen by Cassini on October 14, 2009 An aurora, shining high above the northern part of Saturn, moves from the night side to the day side of the planet in this movie recorded by Cassini. These observations, taken over four days, represent the first visible-light video of Saturn's auroras. They show tall auroral curtains, rapidly changing over time when viewed at the limb, or edge, of the planet's northern hemisphere. The sequence of images also reveals that Saturn's auroral curtains reach heights of more than 1,200 km (746 mi) above the planet's limb. These are the tallest known "northern lights" in the solar system. Each image was obtained with a two- or three-minute exposure, taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera from October 5th to 8th 2009. Uranus • Gas planet • Methane gas gives it its blue-green color Neptune • Like Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune gives off more energy that it receives from the Sun This mosaic combines an almost true-color picture of Neptune taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Wide Field Planetary Camera (WFPC), with a picture of Triton taken with the HST's Faint Object Camera. Although faint, the image of Triton vaguely shows a brighter equatorial region. The south pole is to the lower left This image shows bands of sunlit cirrus-like clouds in Neptune's northern hemisphere. These clouds cast shadows on the blue cloud deck below. The white streaky clouds are from 48 to 160 kilometers wide and extend for thousands of miles. These two 591-second exposures of the rings of Neptune were taken by Voyager 2 on August 26, 1989. The two main rings are clearly visible and appear complete over the region imaged. Also visible in this image is the inner faint ring at about, and the faint band which extends roughly halfway between the two bright rings. The bright glare in the center is due to over-exposure of the crescent of Neptune. Numerous bright stars are evident in the background. Both rings are continuous. Closing it up…. • Tell your shoulder partner two facts about one of the Gas Giants.