Tour of the Outer Planets
Our first stop… Jupiter!
• Largest planet in the solar system• 63 named moons (don’t worry, you only have
to learn four!• 11 times the diameter of Earth• 5 AU from the Sun
What is the surface like? Can we land there?
Great Red Spot
• Giant storm• New spot appeared and then disappeared
days later
Jupiter’s moons (Galilean moons)
Ganymede•Largest moon in the solar system•Larger than Mercury!•Has ice!•Has a magnetosphere•Very thin oxygen atmosphere!
Callisto-2nd largest Galilean moon
• Same size as Mercury
• May have subsurface liquid ocean
• Could hold life in ocean ??
Io- 3rd largest Galilean moon• 400 active SO2
volcanoes due to tidal activity with Jupiter
• Some are taller than Everest
• Rock coated with sulfur dioxide frost
Europa-last, but most important• Smaller than the
Moon• Surface
composed of 100 km thick ice layer
• Liquid ocean underneath
• Thin O2 • Life, microbes?
Next Stop… Saturn!• 10 times the
diameter of Earth
• 10 AU from Earth
• 56 moons (you only need to know ONE!
• Storms on surface
Saturn would float in water
• Titan is the largest moon of Saturn (1.5 times our Moon)
• Made of ice and rock
• Air is nitrogen and methane
• Possible microbial life?
Uranus!!Ice Giant• 4 times
Earth’s diameter
• 19 AU away• More
methane, ammonia than Jupiter
• 27 moons
Sideways rotation• 42 years of
darkness/light• Rings less visible
than Saturn (rock vs. ice)
Ice Giant: Neptune!• Close in size and
composition to Uranus
• Methane gives it the blue color
• Four faint rings• Great Dark Spot• 30 AU from the Sun• Moon, Triton,
revolves in retrograde
• 13 moons
Dwarf Planets• Ceres (in the asteroid belt) about 3 A.U.– Probe will arrive in 2015
• Pluto (Charon)– Two objects in binary
revolution– 40 AU from the Sun– Orbit angled differently
than Earth– Crosses Neptunes orbit
20 out of 248 years
Clyde Tombaugh’s discovery
• Eres• Other TNOs
Comets• Small collections of ice, dust, and rock that
orbit the sun• Some originate in the Kuiper belt, others from
the Oort cloud
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