Giant Planets & Satellites

Internal structure of gas giants and ice giants. Equations of state. Equilibrium of rotating bodies. Escape of internal heat.

Please read the following in Carroll & Ostlie. Note that you only need to read the subsections of 10.4 listed here.

10.4	Energy Transport and Thermodynamics
	Adiabatic Gradient — Convection Criterion

21.1	The Giant Worlds
	The Discovery of the Galilean Moons — The Discoveries of Uranus and Neptune — Missions to the Giant Planets — Composition and Structure — The Distribution of Mass Inside the Planets — The Cores of the Planets — Internal Heat and the Cooling Timescale — Modeling the Interiors of the Giant Planets — The Upper Atmospheres — The Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impacts on Jupiter — Atmospheric Dynamics — Magnetic Fields

21.2	The Moons of the Giants
	The Evolution of the Galilean Moons — The Effects of Tidal Forces on Io — Io's Interaction with Jupiter's Magnetic Field — Europa — Ganymede — Callisto — A Unified Formation of the Galilean Moons — The Smaller Moons of Jupiter — Saturn's Titan with its Thick Atmosphere — Mimas and the Herschel Crater — The Chaotic Surface of Miranda, a Moon of Uranus — Neptune's Triton

21.3	Planetary Ring Systems
	The Structure of Saturn's Rings — The Composition of Saturn's Rings — Jupiter's Tenuous Ring System — The Rings of Uranus — Neptune's Rings — Physical Processes Affecting Ring Systems — Ring Formation

Problem Set #6: Due 11 October 2012. Note clarification added to problem 4(a).

Joshua E. Barnes (barnes at ifa.hawaii.edu)

Updated: 4 October 2012
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ast241_f12/gps.html