Feline Musings

All planets, except Mercury, in our solar system have an atmosphere and, therefore, weather.  Mercury is the exception.  With virtually no atmosphere, the planet’s temperature change is driven entirely by the (extremely slow 176-Earth-days from one sunrise to the next) rotation of the planet beneath the near Sun.

The atmosphere of Venus is very hot and thick, made up mainly of carbon dioxide, and thick clouds of sulfuric acid that completely cover the planet. The atmosphere traps the small amount of energy from the sun that does reach the surface along with the heat the planet itself releases. This greenhouse effect has made the surface and lower atmosphere of Venus one of the hottest places in the solar system! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071128155513.htm

Martian dust devils can tower to five miles (8 km) above its terrain, dwarfing our half-mile high tornados.  Global-wide dust storms can last for several months.  The major factor driving dust storms, is the small dust-particle size.  Even Mars’ thin atmosphere can lift these tiny motes. Large dust storms which can occur on Mars for several months at a time can turn the clouds a yellow or red color.

The solar system’s longest lasting storm is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — raging on and off for 340 years, since Cassini first discovered it in 1665, shortly after Hans Lippershey invented the telescope in 1608.  The high-pressure storm gyrates (in the opposite direction from low-pressure Earth hurricanes) due to Coriolis effects (just as on Earth) making a complete rotation every 6 days (2.5 times faster than storms rotate on Earth).  Click for animation of the s, courtesy of Wikipedia and the American Museum of Natural History. 

It rains methane on Titan , Saturn’s biggest moon, instead of water but Titan otherwise has Earthlike weather processes, smog, for example.  The Sun’s ultraviolet light breaks up methane in Titan’s atmosphere, which produces the orange haze: a smog worse than LA’s on its worst day. If you and I could land on Titan, we would descend through a colorful nitrogen atmosphere denser than Earth’s:  a violet outer layer, next, a thin blue layer, a yellow band, and finally deepening shades of orange until we settled on her cold (-290° F, -180° C) surface — perhaps a sticky, cold sand made from ice grains. Scattered clouds would float above in the orange hazy distance.

Saturn itself is thought to be made up of a liquid, until the core. It would be a bit like being covered in water oceans, but in the case of Saturn, the seas would be liquid hydrogen.

A high layer of haze has been detected around the Uranus’ pole which faces the Sun and that whole hemisphere has what is known as ‘dayglow’ which is where the planet radiates ultraviolet light.

The windiest spot under the Sun may be Neptune, with blasts over 1500 mph (2400 km/h).

Pluto turns into a planet frost ball every so often.  A red-tinted frost probably covers Pluto — a methane-nitrogen-carbon-monoxide frost.

Share and Show: