NOTE THAT THIS STUDY GUIDE CONTAINS ONLY THE MATERIAL THAT IS NEW. YOU MUST USE THE PREVIOUS STUDY GUIDES FOR THE COMPREHENSIVE SECTION OF THE TEST. If you have lost your copy, they are available on the web- linked from the class syllabus.

MAKE SURE THAT YOUR NAME IS ON THE ANSWER SHEET AND YOU HAVE PUT IN YOUR FULL UNIVERSITY ID NUMBER-LEFT JUSTIFIED. DO NOT USE YOUR AFFILIATE ID NUMBER I will subtract points if you use your affiliate ID instead of your University ID.

BRING A PICTURE ID. I WILL ASK YOU TO PLACE IT ON THE TABLE IN FRONT OF YOU AND WILL GO AROUND THE CLASS DURING THE EXAM CHECKING EACH ID.
 

Chapter 23 Venus and Mars

VENUS
1. Does Venus go through phases as seen from the Earth?
2. What is the rotation period of Venus, why is the direction of its rotation unusual?
3. Why is it difficult to see the surface? What are the clouds made of? What is the composition of the Venusian atmosphere?
4. The high temperatures on Venus are a result of the Greenhouse effect.
5. How do we know what the surface of Venus looks like? What was the purpose of the Magellan mission?
6. The surface of Venus has both Lava Flows and rolling plains. There are lots of impact and volcanic craters on Venus.
7. Venus also has Shield Volcanoes. Where are some prominent shield volcanoes on the Earth?
8. What are Coronae? What is the evidence that Plate Tectonics does not occur on Venus?

MARS:
9. What do we know about the surface of Mars? What are the names of the various orbiters and landers?
10. What is the composition of the Martian atmosphere? How did it probably originate? Could we live on Mars without breathing apparatus?
11. What molecules were able to escape from Mars (Figure 23-16)?
12. What is the importance of the amount of argon gas in the Martian atmosphere?
13. Does Mars have a magnetic field?
14. Mars has huge dust storms that last for months.
15. Know that Mars has both shield volcanos and impact craters - but in different regions.
16. What is Olympus Mons?
17. What is the evidence that there were large amounts of flowing water on the surface of Mars billions of years ago?
18. What are outflow channels? Runoff channels? Where do we think the water is now?
19. What is the composition of the Martian polar caps? Are the two caps identical?
20. What do we know about the Martian meteorites?
21. What are Phobos and Deimos? They most closely resemble captured asteroids.

Chapter 24: Jupiter and Saturn

JUPITER
1. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the second most massive object.
2. It can be considered a Failed Star - why? It radiates more heat than it receives from the Sun. What is the heat source?
3. We find Jupiter sized planets around other stars. How do we know this?
4. The Great Red Spot is a very long lived hurricane. Who first saw it?
5. How does the average density of Jupiter compare to that of the Earth?
6. What is the average composition of Jupiter? Of the atmosphere of Jupiter? How deep do we see into the atmosphere?
7. Jupiter is not a perfect sphere? Why is it oblate?
8. What are the rotation periods and how fast do the winds move on both Jupiter and Saturn?
9. We detect radio waves from Jupiter. They are produced by what feature of Jupiter?
10. Do Jupiter and Saturn have Aurorae?
11.What is the Io Plasma Torus? What is Io?
12. What are the Belts and Zones of the Jovian atmosphere? What are they telling us about the heat flow from the interior? Which are rising and which are falling?
13. What happened to the Galileo Probe?
14. All of the Jovian planets have rings. When was the ring of Jupiter discovered and how?
15. What is the Roche Limit? What does it have to do with Planetary Rings?
16. I spent quite a bit of time on the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact. Do we have any evidence that these occur elsewhere in the Solar system?
17.What do we know about the Jovian and Saturnian interiors? What happens to hydrogen gas as the pressure increases?
18. Why do we think that J and S might have rocky cores since we can't see that deep into the atmosphere?
19. Why do J and S radiate more energy than they receive from the Sun?
20. I discussed the Galilean Moons of Jupiter in some detail. They are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. You will need to know the distinguishing features of these moons. Why is Io so interesting? Why is Europa so important?
21. Io has a large number of erupting volcanoes. These blast sulfur into space to form the Io Torus. What causes the heating that results in volcanoes on Io?
22. Europa probably has a liquid ocean underneath a thick ice layer. Why do we think this?
23. Ganymede has both old and young surface regions. The craters look like they were formed by impacts with shaved ice.
24. Callisto has cratered regions and probably an old surface. It has not suffered as much tidal heating as the other moons.

SATURN
1. Saturn is the second most massive planet and it has a lower density than Jupiter.
2. It also rotates rapidly, almost as rapidly as Jupiter, and so it is flattened.
3. It radiates nearly twice as much heat as it receives from the Sun. What is the source of heat for this planet?
4. Saturn also has a magnetic field. But it is weaker than that of Jupiter.
5. Why are the clouds of Saturn less distinct than those of Jupiter.
6. What is the name of the spacecraft on its way to Saturn?
7. Read about the discovery that the rings are actually particles and not solid. The pictures from the various spacecraft flybys revolutionized our understanding. For example, the Spokes seen in Voyager images. The breaking up of the rings into many smaller narrower rings. The Shepherd satellites associated with the F ring.
8. Saturn has a lot of moons. Some are more important and interesting than others.
9. Titan is definitely known to have an atmosphere and the existence of this atmosphere has been known for sometime.
10. What are some of the organic compounds detected in the atmosphere of Titan?
11. Titan probably has a rocky core but the rest is very icy. It is larger than Mercury. There are lots of unanswered questions.
12. The Huygens lander will probe the atmosphere and surface in 2004.
13. Read about the smaller moons.
14. Parts of the surface of Enceladus resemble the surface of Ganymede: cracks and new surface plus regions that are heavily cratered.

Chapter 25: The Outermost Planets: Uranus, Neptune, Pluto

URANUS:
1. Look at Data File 9 (Look at the Data Files for all the planets)
2. When was Uranus discovered and by who?
3. How is the direction of rotation of Uranus different from that of the Earth? How does that affect the Seasons on Uranus?
4. What is the structure and composition of its atmosphere? I showed recent pictures of the clouds in class.
5. What do we know about the internal structure of Uranus?
6. What is the direction and strengths of the magnetic fields of the outer planets? Why are those of Uranus and Neptune so unusual?
7. How were the rings of Uranus and Neptune discovered? How do they differ from those of Saturn?
8. What do we know about the Shepherd satellites of the Uranus rings?
9. How many moons does Uranus have? How many had we found before the Voyager flights?
10. The largest moon is Titania. How does its size compare to that of our own Moon?
11. Look at the pictures on Pages 550 and 551. What are the various explanations of the surface features of Miranda? I emphasized the break-up and reforming explanation in class.

NEPTUNE
1. Look at Data File 10 (Look at the Data Files for all the planets)
2. When was Neptune discovered and by whom?
3. We know very little about Neptune - even with the Voyager flyby. It shows a lot more atmospheric features than does Uranus.
4.What do we know about the internal structure of Neptune?
5.Do the rings of Neptune also have shepherding satellites?
6. What is so unusual about Triton? How is its orbital plane tilted with respect to the ecliptic? What causes the plumes and geysers?

PLUTO
1.How was Pluto discovered? Could there be any more planets as large as Pluto in our Solar System but farther away?
2. What is Charon. What is the surface of Pluto like? How was Charon discovered?
3. Don't forget to read Data File 11.
4. Is Pluto massive enough to affect the orbit of Neptune? How long have we known this?
5. What was important about the transits of Charon across Pluto?
6. Does Pluto have an atmosphere? What is its surface like?

Chapter 27: Life in the Universe
1. Read pages 594 to 603 but you will not be held responsible for this material.
2. What is the evidence that life may have existed at one time on Mars - probably not correct as we know now.?
3. How do we know that some meteorites originated on Mars?
4. What is the life zone of a star? How many planets in our own solar system can be found in the habitable zone of the Sun?
5. What can we say about life outside the solar system?
6. What is the evidence that other stars have planets?
7. What is the likelihood of interstellar communication? Read about the attempts at interstellar communication.
8. The material on Page 611 is called the Drake equation after Frank Drake who first proposed it. It provides a guesstimate of the number of communicating galactic civilizations.