AST 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 27: Tunxis Community College, Christiaan Huygens, Pioneer 11

• School: Tunxis Community College
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: AST 111
• Professor: Bourne

Document Summary

Voyager i- discovered a thin ring around jupiter. The ring is close to jupiter, being located only about 1. 8 planetary radii from jupiter. 2 other rings have been discovered, and they are replenished by the small moonlets located near them. Galileo did not detect the rings of saturn. His telescope did not have enough optical quality. He though saturn had a very flattened disk. The rings were discovered in 1655 by christian huygens. Cassini- discovered the famous gap between two groups of the rings. Like jupiter, saturn"s cloud belts rotate differentially. Saturn"s rotation rate is 10h39m (2nd fastest) Saturn is more oblate than jupiter, with its equatorial diameter 10% greater than its polar diameter. Pioneer 11- passed saturn in 1979, followed by voyager 1- in 1980 and voyager 2- in. Saturn"s magnetic field is only 5% as strong as jupiter"s because saturn"s liquid metallic hydrogen layer is much thinner than is the same layer at jupiter.