Planetary Oddities
Though not a planet anymore, this icy body has five moons and a heart-shaped glacier.
What is Pluto?
The outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere that we see during a total solar eclipse.
Corona
The average density of Saturn is less than this common liquid.
What is water?
The Great Red Spot is a massive storm in this planet’s atmosphere.
What is Jupiter?
You’ll only see one side of me, but I’m loyal. I stabilize your tilt, control your tides, and I was born from your breakup. Let’s keep our phases synced.
What is the Moon?
These two are the only planets that spin clockwise, in a retrograde manner
Venus and Uranus
The primary process powering the Sun’s core.
Light travels at about 300,000 kilometers per second. The Moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 384,400 kilometers, and Earth is about 150 million kilometers from the Sun. To the nearest minute how long does it take light from the Sun to reach the Moon?
The reason Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t lose hydrogen easily, but Mars’s does.
Earth's stronger gravity and magnetic field
My rotation is so slow, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east--eventually. A year flies by before I can finish a single day.
What is Olympus Mons?
This planet has a core that makes up over 80% of its radius.
What is Mercury?
This process dominates energy transport in the outer third of the Sun’s interior, where hot plasma rises, cools at the surface, and sinks back down.
What is convection?
A year on Mercury is about 88 Earth days. How many Mercury years fit into 1 Earth year?
4.15 Mercury years
The two planets with carbon dioxide-dominated atmospheres.
What are Venus and Mars?
My rotation is so slow, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east--eventually. A year flies by before I can finish a single day.
What is Venus?
This exotic form of matter, believed to exist in the cores of Jupiter and Saturn, behaves like an electrically conductive liquid and may be responsible for their powerful magnetic fields.
Metallic hydrogen
This phenomenon causes auroras on Earth. (Be detailed!)
What is solar wind interacting with Earth’s magnetic field?
If light takes about 8.3 minutes to reach Earth from the Sun, how long does it take to reach Jupiter (5.2 AU away)?
What is 43.16 minutes?
These two compounds in Neptune's atmosphere contribute to its blue color.
Methane (CH4) and Ammonia (NH3)
I’ve got major fire energy—literally. I’m constantly erupting, coated in sulfur, and my surface gets a makeover every few years. I live in a toxic relationship with my massive ex, ♃, who stretches and squeezes me so hard I melt inside. Some call me unstable. I call it passionate.
What is Io?
Mercury has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance. Explain what this means, and what the spin-orbit resonance would be for a tidally locked object and provide an example of a tidally locked object.
Mercury rotates on its axis three times for every two orbits it completes around the Sun. 1:1 for tidally locked object
These arch-like magnetic features on the Sun’s surface can last for weeks and often precede solar flares or CMEs.
What are prominences?
Earth rotates once every 24 hours. Jupiter rotates once every ~10 hours, even though it’s over 11 times wider. Roughly how many Earth-sized planets could fit across Jupiter’s equator in the time it takes it to rotate once?
What are 35 Earth-sized planets?
Some rocky bodies in the Solar System have heavily cratered surfaces, while others show few craters and more signs of volcanism or tectonics.
What does the presence or absence of craters tell us about a planet or moon’s geological activity? (Be detailed!)
What is: A surface with few craters is likely geologically active, with volcanism or plate tectonics reshaping the surface and erasing old impacts, while a heavily cratered surface indicates geological inactivity and a very old, unchanged crust.
I may look cold and quiet on the outside, but I’ve got geysers blasting from my south pole and an ocean bubbling beneath my icy shell. I’m small, reflective, and constantly showering Saturn’s E ring with frozen bits of myself.
What is Enceladus?