RANDY L. PHELPS
This is the Planetary
Atmospheres Module
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Procedure
1. For this module, please look through the
"lecture" notes for "Planetary
Atmospheres" These notes contain the material, in condensed form, that I
will expect you to become familiar with. I am sure you will have questions about the
material, especially since it is presented in the form of lecture notes. To help you
fill in the blanks, I have added web links below to gain further insight into select
portions of the material.
2. Be sure to read Chapters 13 and 15 in
"The New Solar System"
3. In addition, you should investigate the
following Web-links. These deal with the atmosphere of Mars. It is essential
that you pay close attention to the information in these web sites, as we will devote the
next class period to a discussion of the information. You will be expected to
participate in the discussions, so you will need to have read the material beforehand.
Goals
After you have
completed this assignment, you should be comfortable with the following concepts:
How do the atmospheres of the terrestrial and Jovian
planets differ?
What are the interesting properties of the atmospheres of
each planet that has one?
Why is the atmosphere of Venus so hostile?
How has the atmosphere of Mars changed over time?
Why is the atmosphere of Titan so interesting?
After you have
completed this assignment, you should be able to answer these, and similar questions:
How do the percentages of CO2 in the
atmospheres of Venus, Earth and Mars compare?
- How do the percentages of N2 in the atmospheres
of Venus, Earth and Mars compare?
- How do the percentages of H2O in the atmospheres
of Venus, Earth and Mars compare?
- How do the total percentages of CO2 on
Venus and Earth compare? Why do the atmosphereic percentages differ from the
atmospheric percentages?
- What is albedo? What features of a planet contribute
to the reflection of energy back into space?
- How does CO2 give rise to the runaway greenhouse
effect, and hence heat a planet?
- How does ozone contribute to the heating of the Earth's
middle atmosphere? How does this help to define different regions in the atmosphere,
the troposhere and the stratosphere?
- Why does Earth retain its water? Why does Venus not
retain water in its atmosphere?
- How did atmospheres of terrestrial planets originate?
How did the atmospheres of the giant planets originate?
- Why are the masses of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune smaller
than that of Jupiter?
- What are the major constituents of the giant planet
atmospheres?
- How does the amount of methane (CH4) in the
atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune compare? How does this explain
the colors of Uranus and Neptune?
- How fast are the winds in the atmospheres of the outer
planets?
- What are belts and zones, and why do they exist in the
atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn?
- What are the "Great Red Spot" and the "Great
Dark Spot"?
- Why do Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune have rather dynamic
atmospheres?
- Why was Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 important?
- What spacecraft mission studied the atmosphere of Jupiter
by sending a probe into the atmosphere?
- Why is the Saturnian moon Titan of interest?
- What spacecraft mission will soon investigate Titan?
The
above questions, and variants of them, will form the exam questions for this portion of
the course. It is, therefore, to your advantage to do this web-based assignment!
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