16: Giant Planets — Read — Invisible Network

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16.1: Exploring the Outer Planets
The outer solar system contains the four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have overall compositions similar to that of the Sun and have been explored by the Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini spacecraft. Voyager 2 explored Jupiter (1979), Saturn (1981), Uranus (1986), and Neptune (1989)—a grand tour of the giant planets—and these flybys have been the only explorations to date of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
16.2: The Giant Planets
Jupiter is 318 times more massive than Earth. Saturn is about 25% as massive as Jupiter, and Uranus and Neptune are only 5% as massive. All four have deep atmospheres and opaque clouds, and all rotate quickly with periods from 10 to 17 hours. Jupiter and Saturn have extensive mantles of liquid hydrogen. Uranus and Neptune are depleted in hydrogen and helium relative to Jupiter and Saturn (and the Sun). Each giant planet has a core of “ice” and “rock” of about 10 Earth masses.
16.3: Atmosphere of the Giant Planets
The four giant planets have generally similar atmospheres, composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. Their atmospheres contain small quantities of methane and ammonia gas, both of which also condense to form clouds. Deeper (invisible) cloud layers consist of water and possibly ammonium hydrosulfide (Jupiter and Saturn) and hydrogen sulfide (Neptune). In the upper atmospheres, hydrocarbons and other trace compounds are produced by photochemistry. We do not know the origin of Jupiter's cloud colors.
16.4: Key Terms

This page titled 16: Giant Planets was last modified on Fri, 16 May 2025 18:10:30 GMT and is shared under a CC BY license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Rachel Mastrapa.

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