Extreme atmospheres in the solar system's planets.
I usually have a topic already in mind when I start writing these daily posts but I don't have anything in my head right now. I could talk about the weird atmospheric phenomenon that are observed on planets in the solar system.
Starting from Mercury all the way till Neptune, each of the solar system planets have unique atmospheric conditions. Venus is the hottest of them all, hotter than Mercury is though further away from the Sun thanks to all of the green house gases in it's atmosphere(global warming scare!!!). The planet takes 225 days to go around the sun but it takes almost 243 days to go around itself i.e orbit itself. Winds as strong as 300 kmph have been observed on the planet. You can start here to know more about Venus. But Venus isn't the only planet with fast winds. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all of the gaseous, outer system planets are known to have fast(er) winds. Jupiter, in addition, has an extremely large cyclone known as the Giant Red Spot, bigger in size than Earth is. The atmospheric winds are also different at different latitudes leading to band shapes on the planet.
I'll stop here for now and will elaborate at a later time, once I've finished preparing the report and presentation for my atmospheric science course. But for now, let me stay that from what I've read so far, the planets are the best place to study esoteric atmospheric phenomenon, ones that cannot be observed or simulated on earth given their magnanimity and grandeur.
On a different note, all of the solar system's planets have had a specific probe or satellite sent to them to study them in detail. Except for Pluto. And finally in Jan 2006, NASA launched New Horizons to study Pluto in further detail but ironically, IAU (International Astronomical Union) downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a dwarf planet in Aug 2006!
Starting from Mercury all the way till Neptune, each of the solar system planets have unique atmospheric conditions. Venus is the hottest of them all, hotter than Mercury is though further away from the Sun thanks to all of the green house gases in it's atmosphere(global warming scare!!!). The planet takes 225 days to go around the sun but it takes almost 243 days to go around itself i.e orbit itself. Winds as strong as 300 kmph have been observed on the planet. You can start here to know more about Venus. But Venus isn't the only planet with fast winds. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all of the gaseous, outer system planets are known to have fast(er) winds. Jupiter, in addition, has an extremely large cyclone known as the Giant Red Spot, bigger in size than Earth is. The atmospheric winds are also different at different latitudes leading to band shapes on the planet.
I'll stop here for now and will elaborate at a later time, once I've finished preparing the report and presentation for my atmospheric science course. But for now, let me stay that from what I've read so far, the planets are the best place to study esoteric atmospheric phenomenon, ones that cannot be observed or simulated on earth given their magnanimity and grandeur.
On a different note, all of the solar system's planets have had a specific probe or satellite sent to them to study them in detail. Except for Pluto. And finally in Jan 2006, NASA launched New Horizons to study Pluto in further detail but ironically, IAU (International Astronomical Union) downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a dwarf planet in Aug 2006!