astro unit 2 - jupiter and jupiter's moons

jupiter's magnetic field:

- 10x stronger than earth due to the liquid metallic region - leads to aurora like on earth

size of jupiter:

- 300x as massive as earth - significantly less dense than earth ... 1.3 grams per cubic centimeter... THE DENSITY OF MILK - radius 11x that of earth

lo:

- closest to jupiter - coppery- yellow with black dots which are volcanic plumes - very volcanically active - low crater density - yellow from the sulfur

ganymede:

- largest moon in solar system - larger than mercury - icy crust - has craters so not active now but cracks show it once was more active

Callisto:

- lots of craters... a lot young - farthest of the 4 from jupiter so not very heated - not very changed since formation - about the size of mercury

jupiter's composition and temperature:

- made mostly of hydrogen and helium gas - gaseous molecules of ammonia, methane, and water vapor also present ... these lead to different colors - clouds of different colors at different altitudes - interior temperatures and pressures very high hydrogen in liquid metallic form - likely to have a rocky/metallic core

how many moons does jupiter have? who discovered the largest?

- more than 50 moons - galileo discovered the 4 largest moons in the early 17th century - they looked like stars but were found to orbit jupiter... this proved that it was NOT geocentric (earth is not the center of the universe)

jupiter's life forms:

- proposed by astronomers Carl Sagan and Edwin Saltpeter - sinkers, floaters, and hunters

jupiter's rotation and orbit:

- rotates once every 10 hours... stretched the clouds into long bands - it takes jupiter 12 earth years to orbit the sun... 1 jupiter year = 12 earth years

jupiter's rings:

- small ring system

determining the mass of jupiter:

- using keeper's laws, the mass of jupiter can be measured using the period and semi major axis of the orbit of jupiter's moons. - periods range from 1.8 to 17 days and jupiter's mass is about 317 earth masses

jupiter's wind and red spot:

- winds at 360 km/hr - great red spot = giant storm larger than earth - like anticyclone on earth - storm has lasted 300 years

europa:

-water ice surface - no craters ... ice movement wiped them out - liquid water ocean below

which moon of jupiter is believed to have a liquid ocean beneath a layer of ice?

europa

which moon of jupiter is the largest?

ganymede

of the four galilean moons which is closest to jupiter?

lo

jupiter and diamonds?

methane can convert to carbon soot and high pressures inside jupiter can compress it into diamonds

we saw that keeper's 3rd law states that p2 / a3 = constant. what does p represent in this equation?

orbital period, in this case how long it takes for a satellite to orbit jupiter

besides the discovery that moons orbit jupiter, what other discovery by galileo galilei, with an early telescope, proved that the earth is not at the center of the universe?

the phases of venus