Homework #12 - Professor: Jeff Howard PDF

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Professor: Jeff Howard...

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Mikayla Pair Physics 1404 - Solar System Homework Assignment #12 Homework #12 1. What is a ring crossing? A ring crossing occurs in Spring and Fall when the rings are close to being edge on both to the Sun and to us, which gives the appearance that the rings will disappear altogether. 2. What are shepherd satellites? A shepherd satellite is a satellite whose gravitational effect on a ring helps preserve the ring's shape. 3. List Saturn's Moons. Briefly describe their characteristics. ● Titan: is the largest of Saturn's moons, only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. ● Dione: a dense rocky core surrounded by water-ice, heavily cratered on its back side, moon hosts a thin oxygen atmosphere. ● Enceladus: contains more than 100 geysers at its south pole, heating causes portions of the icy planet to melt. ● Hyperion: small moon with an irregular appearance, has a spongy shape, low density and porous surface ● Iapetus: walnut-like shape, some of the highest mountains in the solar system. ● Mimas: a gaping crater that gives the rocky moon, most heavily cratered bodies in the solar system, none of the ice melts ● Rhea: lacks a core at its center and is almost all ice, half the size of Earth's moon, contains a faint oxygen atmosphere ● Tethys: made up almost entirely of water ice, strange red arcs on the moon. 4. What is unusual about Titan. Be specific. It is the only moon in the solar system with clouds and a dense, planet-like atmosphere. 5. What mystery is associated with Iapetus? It is a two-faced moon. The dark, leading face reflects little sunlight whereas the icy trailing side reflects much more. 6. Describe the rings of Saturn. They are only visible to the “naked eye”. They are made up of icy chunks that range from a size of a fingernail to the size of a car.

7. Describe the composition and structure of Saturn's atmosphere and interior. Saturn's composition is primarily that of simple molecules such as hydrogen and helium, but there is also ice of ammonia, ice of methane and water ice. The atmosphere of Saturn is only a narrow region. The three cloud decks of Saturn are to be found mostly low in the atmosphere, while hazes of smog can be found higher up. 8. Describe Saturn's magnetosphere. The magnetosphere of Saturn is the cavity created in the flow of the solar wind by the planet's internally generated magnetic field. 9. What is a Roche Limit? The rock limit is the point at what the tidal forces from a planet become strong enough to disrupt the gravitational attraction of other objects. 10. Describe the mission of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 at Saturn. The Voyagers were to conduct closeup studies of Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings, and the larger moons of the two planets....