ast 109 saturn and debris textbook quizzes
Amazingly, the Stardust mission to Comet Wild 2 in 2006 detected _____ _____ near the comet nucleus. (two words)
amino
Similar to Earth, the most abundant gas in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan, is _______.
nitrogen
The two 'Shepherd moons' that keep the F-ring of Saturn from scattering are called and .
prometheus and pandora
Air pressure on the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is about ______ the air pressure we experience here on Earth
same as
Ethane and methane, hydrocarbon gases on Earth, can be found in lakes on
titan
Surprisingly, the Rosetta mission found evidence that the comet's _____ molecules were dramatically different from that of Earth.
water
The Oort Cloud extends out away from the Sun in all directions about _____ times the Earth's distance from the Sun.
100,000
When the Cassini spacecraft passed through a gap in the rings, it was impacted about ______ times.
100,000
The Oort cloud contains roughly _____ comets.
10^12
Enceladus is composed of about _____ % rock.
12
Keeping track of features on the surface of Titan through multiple flybys, the Cassini spacecraft detected the fact that the moon's surface shifts about _____ km/year relative to the interior.
14
About _____ of the roughly 8000 'earth-crossing' asteroids (of the roughly 14,000 'near earth objects') threaten to possibly someday actually strike the earth.
1472
if you were to travel from the equator to the higher latitudes (near either pole) on Saturn, the differential rotation would cause the length of a day that you would measure to be longer by ____ hour(s). [Number accurate to 2 places after the decimal.]
3
If we could latch on to each of the 780,000 known asteroids and drag them all together into one lump, Ceres would make up _____% of that lump's mass.
30
A canyon on Charon is about ____ times deeper than Arizona's Grand Canyon.
5
Wind speeds on Saturn can be as great as _____ km/h, about 3 times the peak winds observed on Jupiter.
5
The 1908 Tunguska event knocked a man off his porch ____ km away.
60
Saturn emits 2.3 times as much energy as it receives from the Sun, and the extra energy comes from Saturn's ______ falling as 'rain' through its clouds and atmosphere.
7
New Horizons revealed which surprising results at Pluto?
Cryovolcanoes.
Like Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto around Jupiter, two of Saturn's moons with strong evidence of subsurface water 'oceans' are
Titan and Enceladus
Saturn rings are mostly composed of
chunks of water ice
Rosetta visited and orbited the comet named _________ . (Full name, carefully spelled.)
chury
According to the text, the dwarf planet whose name is pronounced 'how-may-uh' has the shape of a(n) _______ .
egg or watermelon
The most prominent feature on Mimas (which makes it look a bit like the 'Empire's Death Star' from the first Star Wars movie) is named ________ .
herschel
As it repeatedly completes its regular orbit around the sun, Jupiter's gravity causes the ______ gaps in the Asteroid Belt. (one word - name)
kirkwood
The major reason that life seems so unlikely on Titan is surface
low temps
