Chapter 11 The Giant Planets

In the far future, a daring interplanetary tourist wants to go "hang-gliding" on the jovian planet with the highest equatorial wind speeds. Which planet would have the fastest wind at its equator?

Neptune

The jovian planet that has the longest year (period of revolution) is

Neptune.

The first spacecraft to explore the environment of the planet Jupiter was called

Pioneer

The planet that orbits "on its side" (i.e. has its rotation axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit) is:

Uranus

Much of what we have learned about the jovian planets and their satellites has come from the work of two spacecraft called:

Voyager

Which of the following statements about Jupiter's magnetosphere is TRUE?

it completely covers the inner satellites of Jupiter and is one of the largest structures in the solar system

The upper clouds in the atmosphere of Neptune are composed of

methane.

The dwarf planet Pluto was discovered in 1930. Since that time, which jovian planet has completed a full revolution around the Sun?

more than one of the above

The Red Spot of Jupiter is

All of above

The first spacecraft which did not merely fly by a jovian (or giant) planet, but actually went into orbit around it for an extended period of time was

Galileo

Which of the following spacecraft is NOT leaving the solar system?

Galileo

Jupiter has enough mass to make 318 Earths. In contrast, Uranus and Neptune have only enough mass to make

100 Earths

Which of the following is NOT a way that Jupiter differs from terrestrial planets?

Its surface has many more craters from early collisions.

The planet that has an axis that points roughly straight up, and thus has no seasons to speak of, is:

Jupiter

Which of the jovian planets has the shortest period of rotation (the shortest day)?

Jupiter

Which of the following statements about the seasons on Jupiter is correct?

Jupiter's axis is hardly tilted, so it has no real seasonal variations.

Which of the following is NOT a way the jovian planets differ from the terrestrial planets?

The jovians orbit the Sun in a direction opposite to the terrestrials.

Astronomers believe that Jupiter's strong magnetic field is caused by

a huge layer of metallic hydrogen inside Jupiter

At their centers, all the jovian planets have cores made of:

a solid mixture of rocky and icy materials under great pressure

What do the magnetic fields of Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have in common?

all three have their magnetic axes offset from the center of the planet

Uranus and Neptune do not contain liquid metallic hydrogen because they 1. do not contain enough hydrogen. 2. are not massive enough. 3. have magnetic fields that are much too weak. 4. rotate too slowly. 5. are too far from the sun.

are not massive enough.

The element that can act like a metal when it is under tremendous pressure and is probably responsible for Jupiter's magnetism is

hydrogen

The primary clouds in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn are composed of

frozen ammonia crystals.

The synchrotron radiation (radio waves) that astronomers first observed from Jupiter in the 1950's comes from:

high speed electrons spiraling around the planet's strong magnetic field

By far the most abundant element in the giant (jovian) planets is

hydrogen

Which of the following statements about the Galileo probe that dropped into Jupiter is FALSE?

it detected a lot of water and water vapor clouds on its way down

Which of the following characteristics distinguishes Uranus from every other planet in our solar system?

it rotates on an axis tilted almost 90 degrees to the circle of its orbit

The big problem with the Galileo spacecraft is that

its main antenna is stuck in the closed position

Which of the following is NOT a way that Jupiter differs from terrestrial planets?

its surface has many more craters from early collisions

One way to measure how long Jupiter takes to rotate is to watch the giant storms in its atmosphere go around. A more fundamental way to measure the rotation is to:

measure the changes in the planet's radio waves, which are controlled by its magnetic field

The bluish color that makes the atmosphere of Neptune so beautiful to the human eye is caused by the interaction of sunlight with what gas?

methane

To obtain the wonderful images of the jovian planets in our textbook (out where the sunlight is a lot fainter) what did the Voyager spacecraft cameras have to do as they flew by each world?

swivel the cameras backwards to keep pointing in the same direction as the craft flew by

What was a surprise to astronomers when they carefully examined Neptune with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994?

the Great Dark Spot had disappeared

Which of the following does the composition of a planet like Jupiter resemble?

the Sun

What allowed the Voyager 2 spacecraft to make a "tour" of all four of the jovian planets in the late 1970's and the 1980's?

the four planets were approximately aligned on one side of the Sun and we used the gravity of each planet to speed up the spacecraft to get to the next one in its path

One reason that we have such a complex system of belts/zones/storms in Jupiter's atmosphere is that

the planet rotates very rapidly.

The same process that explains why astronomers see less helium in the upper atmosphere of Saturn when they take spectra also explains

the reason Saturn is warmer than we expect

At the moment when the Voyager spacecraft got closest to Uranus, the Sun was shining directly on the planet's south pole. Uranus takes about 17 hours to rotate once on its axis. If Voyager took a photo of the south pole 8.5 hours later, what would it observe?

the south pole was brightly lit, with the Sun shining down on it