Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Saturn's orbit plane is inclined 2.485 degrees relative to Earth's, and Jupiter's is inclined 1.303 degrees. The ascending nodes of both planets are similar (100.6 degrees for Jupiter and 113.7 degrees for Saturn), meaning if Saturn is above or below Earth's orbital plane Jupiter usually is too. Because these nodes align so well it would be ...
There is a near-resonance between the precession of Saturn's rotational axis and that of Neptune's orbital axis (both of which have periods of about 1.87 million years), which has been identified as the likely source of Saturn's large axial tilt (26.7°). [18] [19] [20] Initially, Saturn probably had a tilt closer to that of Jupiter (3.1 ...
The solar wind interacts with these regions, elongating the magnetosphere on Jupiter's lee side and extending it outward until it nearly reaches the orbit of Saturn. The four largest moons of Jupiter all orbit within the magnetosphere, which protects them from solar wind. [70]: 69 The volcanoes on the moon Io emit large amounts of sulfur ...
Over the period 4–6 February 1962, in a rare series of events, Mercury and Venus reached conjunction as observed from the Earth, followed by Venus and Jupiter, then by Mars and Saturn. Conjunctions took place between the Moon and, in turn, Mars, Saturn, the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. Mercury also reached inferior conjunction with the Sun.
According to the IAU definition, there are eight planets in the Solar System, which are (in increasing distance from the Sun): [2] Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Jupiter is the largest, at 318 Earth masses, whereas Mercury is the smallest, at 0.055 Earth masses. [29]
In science class, we always learned that all the planets in our solar system orbit around the sun. Scientists have figured out this is not necessarily true. Jupiter actually does not orbit the sun
After 500–600 million years (about 4 billion years ago) Jupiter and Saturn divergently crossed the 2:1 orbital resonance, in which Saturn orbited the Sun once for every two Jupiter orbits. [43] This resonance crossing increased the eccentricities of Jupiter and Saturn and destabilized the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.
Saturn's atmosphere exhibits a banded pattern similar to Jupiter's, but Saturn's bands are much fainter and are much wider near the equator. The nomenclature used to describe these bands is the same as on Jupiter. Saturn's finer cloud patterns were not observed until the flybys of the Voyager spacecraft during the 1980s.