giant planets - interiors - macquarie...
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Figure 10.2 The Voyager Spacecraft
The camera (at bottom) is on an arm thatswivels. To the left of the white main
antenna for sending data back to Earth,
you can see a gold disk; this is the coverfor an audio-visual recording of the sights
and sounds of Earth, included for the
remote possibility that some othercivilization might find the capsule
someday. The entire spacecraft weighs
about a ton on Earth. (NASA/JPL)
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Figure 10.7 Internal Structures of the Jovian Planets
Jupiter and Saturn are composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, but Uranus and Neptune consist, in large part, ofcompounds of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. (The diagrams are drawn to scale; numbers show radius in thousands of km.)
Jupiter
This processed color image
of Jupiter was produced in1990 by the U.S. Geological
Survey from a Voyager
image captured in 1979.The colors have been
enhanced to bring out detail.
Zones of light-colored,ascending clouds alternate
with bands of dark,
descending clouds. The
clouds travel around theplanet in alternating
eastward and westward
belts at speeds of up to 540kilometers per hour.
Tremendous storms as big
as Earthly continents surgearound the planet. The
Great Red Spot (oval shape
toward the lower-left) is anenormous anticyclonic storm
that drifts along its belt,
eventually circling the entireplanet.