Deck 11: The Giant Planets

Question 1

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

A) the Sun
B) the Moon
C) the Earth
D) Mars
E) the asteroids

Answer 1

the Sun

Question 2

The big problem with the Galileo spacecraft is that

A) its rockets misfired, putting the orbiter section into the wrong orbit
B) its camera has an arm that will not move, preventing us from pointing it correctly
C) its main antenna is stuck in the closed position
D) its computer has stopped working
E) it was manufactured in Bayonne, New Jersey, and didn't work
Section 11.2: The Giant Planets

Answer 2

its main antenna is stuck in the closed position

Question 3

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

A) Viking
B) Magellan
C) Voyager
D) Mariner
E) Enterprise

Answer 3

Voyager

Question 4

The largest planet in the solar system (by mass) is

A) Earth
B) Mars
C) Venus
D) Jupiter
E) Neptune

Question 5

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

A) Viking
B) Mariner
C) Apollo
D) Voyager
E) Pioneer

Question 6

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

A) Jupiter
B) Saturn
C) Uranus
D) Neptune
E) you can't fool me, they all have roughly the same year

Question 7

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?

A) NASA had developed a completely new kind of rocket that could send the craft from planet to planet
B) 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
C) the spacecraft stopped off to collect fuel on the satellites of each planet before proceeding to the next one
D) we used laser beams to propel the spacecraft into the outer solar system, where sunlight is dim
E) you can't fool me, no spacecraft has ever explored four different planets

Question 8

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

A) Jupiter
B) Saturn
C) Uranus
D) Neptune
E) more than one of the above

Question 9

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

A) Jupiter
B) Saturn
C) Uranus
D) Neptune
E) you can't fool me, the length of the day is exactly the same on all the giant planets

Question 10

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

A) Jupiter has seasons pretty much like the Earth; its axis has the same tilt, and each season is about the same length
B) Jupiter has the same axis tilt as the Earth, but each season on Jupiter is much longer
C) Jupiter's axis is tilted much more than the Earth's so its seasons are much more intense
D) Jupiter's axis is hardly tilted so it has no real seasonal variations
E) Jupiter's orbit brings it much closer to the Sun in summer and much farther from the Sun in winter

Question 11

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

A) it was the first spacecraft to enter the atmosphere of a jovian planet
B) it sent back information for a little less than an hour
C) it was slowed by atmospheric friction and a parachute
D) it detected a lot of water and water vapor clouds on its way down
E) it found that the temperature and pressure increased as it got further down

Question 12

Which of the following is NOT a correct statement about the ways the jovian planets differ from the terrestrial planets?

A) the jovians are larger
B) all the jovians have satellites around them and none of the terrestrials do
C) the jovians are made mostly of liquid and gas
D) the jovians are typically colder and further from the Sun
E) the jovians have rings while the terrestrials do not

Question 13

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?

A) use faster (more light sensitive) film
B) slow down the spacecraft using retro-rockets to get long exposures
C) swivel the cameras backwards to keep pointing in the same direction as the craft flew by
D) use more than one camera and combine the light that fell into each one
E) simply make do with pictures that got worse and worse as we went outward from the Sun; by the time we got to Neptune, the images were quite blurry

Question 14

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

A) Pioneer 10
B) Pioneer 11
C) Galileo
D) Voyager 1
E) Voyager 2

Question 15

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

A) Uranus
B) Neptune
C) Pluto
D) Jupiter
E) Saturn

Question 16

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

A) its average density is lower
B) it is farther away from the Sun
C) it includes much more gas and liquid
D) it is larger in diameter
E) its surface has many more craters from early collisions

Question 17

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:

A) send a spacecraft like the Galileo probe into the top cloud layer
B) determine how long the innermost moons take to orbit Jupiter
C) measure the changes in the planet's radio waves, which are controlled by its magnetic field
D) determine the amount of methane in the planet's atmosphere
E) you can't fool me, astronomers don't have any reliable way of knowing how long Jupiter takes the spin

Question 18

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

A) helium
B) hydrogen
C) oxygen
D) nitrogen
E) silicon

Question 19

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

A) Galileo
B) Einstein
C) Voyager
D) the Hubble Space Telescope
E) Cassini

Question 20

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

A) 100 Earths
B) 70 Earths
C) 15 Earths
D) 2 Earths
E) you can't fool me, Uranus and Neptune have a lot of ice, and so have much more mass than Jupiter

Question 21

The Red Spot of Jupiter is:

A) variable in size
B) a high pressure storm system in the atmosphere
C) made of a reddish colored material (but we don't know what gives it the reddish color)
D) long-lived (observed since the 1600's)
E) all of the above

Question 22

The upper clouds in the atmosphere of Neptune are composed of:

A) frozen water crystals
B) liquid hydrogen
C) iron crystals caught in the magnetic field lines
D) carbon dioxide
E) methane

Question 23

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

A) gold
B) helium
C) hydrogen
D) water
E) vanallenium

Question 24

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

A) the moon Io stirs up the atmosphere
B) the planet rotates very rapidly
C) the magnetic field is not centered inside
D) ring particles "rain down" regularly
E) the closeness of the asteroid belt means the planet feels a lot of gravitational tugs from nearby asteroids

Question 25

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

A) deep within Jupiter, in the metallic hydrogen layers
B) high speed electrons spiraling around the planet's strong magnetic field
C) the upper-atmosphere clouds that move so quickly near the equator of the planet
D) the Red Spot with its tremendous friction
E) physics labs at the University of Jupiter, on the planet's surface

Question 26

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?

A) Jupiter
B) Saturn
C) Uranus
D) Neptune
E) all the jovian planets have roughly the same wind speed at the equator

Question 27

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

A) the magnetic field of the planet had reversed (north was now south)
B) new elements and compounds were found in the upper atmosphere that had not been there before
C) the Great Dark Spot had disappeared
D) the wind speeds had slowed considerably
E) a large smiley-face had been constructed using dark clouds

Question 28

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?

A) carbon dioxide
B) oxygen
C) argon
D) methane
E) helium

Question 29

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?

A) the south pole was in darkness
B) the south pole was brightly lit, with the Sun shining down on it
C) the south pole was in twilight
D) the south pole was facing directly away from the Sun
E) more than one of the above

Question 30

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

A) water vapor
B) iron and nickel
C) frozen ammonia crystals
D) metallic hydrogen
E) frozen alcohol (ready to make cocktails)

Question 31

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

A) Jupiter
B) Saturn
C) Uranus
D) Neptune
E) you can't fool me, all the giant planets have dramatically different seasons

Question 32

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

A) it has more than one moon
B) its atmosphere is made of gases
C) it rotates on an axis tilted almost 90 degrees to the circle of its orbit
D) its orbit is significantly tilted relative to the orbits of the other planets
E) its magnetic axis does not lie in the same direction as its rotation axis

Question 33

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

A) a core of molten iron and nickel
B) electric charges from the moon Io
C) a huge layer of metallic hydrogen inside Jupiter
D) the circulation of large reddish storms containing magnetic ammonia crystals
E) the magnetic personalities of all the jovian movie stars that live there

Question 34

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

A) all three have their magnetic axes offset from the center of the planet
B) all are weaker than the Earth's magnetic field
C) all are caused by molten iron and nickel deep within each planet
D) all are tilted by about 50 or 60 degrees from the planet's axis of rotation
E) all were discovered by spacecraft that flew by the planets
Section 11.3 The Atmospheres of the Giant Planets

Question 35

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

A) its source is a zone directly above the planet's cloudtops
B) the magnetic field is 20 to 30 times weaker than the Earth's
C) it is tilted so that it is almost perpendicular (at 90 degrees) to the equator of Jupiter
D) it completely covers the inner satellites of Jupiter and is one of the largest structures in the solar system
E) it is easily visible to the human eye with a small telescope

Question 36

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

A) hydrogen and helium in the form of gas
B) hydrogen and helium in the form of liquids
C) methane, ammonia, and sulfur compounds
D) a solid mixture of rocky and icy materials under great pressure
E) new elements produced by the high pressure; elements which we do not have on Earth

Question 37

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

A) why the winds near the equator are so high
B) the reason Saturn is warmer than we expect
C) the hexagon at one of Saturn's poles
D) why Saturn has rings
E) the strong radio waves we detect from Saturn