Your Planetary Forecast - Space Pod 06/19/15

When I wake up in the morning I typically will have my breakfast of eggs and lox and LH2 and when I'm done with that I'll go look at my 10 meter mirror and I'll make sure that I've got perfect aerodynamics to throttle up through my area of maximum dynamic pressure. But after that I need to figure out what clothes I want to put on. After all I can't go out in my birthday suit, that's not allowed anymore. So I look at the weather forecast because that will help me determine what I want to wear even though sometimes in winter I do wear shirts shorts and flip-flops. It is Los Angeles after all. Now we are going to go out and colonize the solar system eventually so we should probably look at the weather reports for some of the other planets as well. That way we can figure out what we need to pack. This is your Space Pod for June 19, 2015. We begin our solar system weather forecast on Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. A small and heavily cratered monument to the extremes of temperature differences. On the day side near the equatorial regions temperatures can climb to 425 degrees celsius, just a tad bit hot. Because of a lack of atmosphere to retain heat, Mercury's night side can drop to a ridiculous minus 170 degrees celsius. Truly a planet on fire and freezing all at once. Venus on the other hand is just straight up not pleased that you exist. Thick sulfur dioxide clouds hide a surface uniformly baked at 467 degrees celsius, the hottest surface temperatures in the solar system. And with crushing pressures at 90 times what we experience here on Earth, it's quite a pressure cooker. Upper atmospheric winds can whip it up to 360 kilometers an hour and it's theorized that some of Venus's highest mountain peaks may have snow on them made of tellurium. Anticyclonic vortices hang around the south poles and lightning has been detected, albeit at a frequency less than that of lightning here on Earth. Speaking of Earth, we're going to skip it. You live here, it's getting a little bit hotter but you know what's up. Mars, our near and dear red neighbor that we oh so love to chuck robots at, and possibly our first destination for serious human colonization, is quite like Elton John described it, cold as hell. The average surface temperature is close to negative 60 degrees celsius, with nighttime winter temperatures dipping down to minus 140 degrees celsius. Although Mars's atmosphere is thin, only one percent of the density of Earth's and mostly made of carbon dioxide, seasonal dust storms are a regular occurrence, with the occasional global dust storm wreaking havoc on anything needing solar cells to operate. The outer solar system is a weird place. None of the four planets in it receive enough sunlight to have their weather driven by solar energy, but for some reason they seem to be incredibly active. We're still actually a little puzzled as to how this occurs, but nonetheless they are extremely dynamic places. Jupiter is a case study for what happens when you let multiple bands of cloud moving in opposite directions collide with each other. You're going to find clouds of mostly molecular hydrogen, helium, and traces of water, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia, all of them sitting at around minus 110 degrees celsius, with powerful storms. The most famous of these storms, the great red spot, was there when Galileo first took a look back in 1610, and it's still raging on today. Although Saturn's beauty is mostly attributed to its ring system, it can also be quite a stormy place as well. Once again we're talking mostly molecular hydrogen and helium in the atmosphere, and it's around minus 185 degrees celsius. Winds really crank up the speed here to nearly 1800 kilometers an hour. Storms can wrap literally around the entirety of the planet. Saturn has a vortex in its south pole, but the most interesting feature in Saturn's atmosphere has to be the hexagonal cloud formation that's been at its north pole since Voyager 1 flew past in 1981. Uranus is much like Jupiter and Saturn, with an atmosphere mostly made up of hydrogen and helium, but there's significantly more ices like water and methane. 900 kilometer an hour winds would generate quite a wind chill, and it's already minus 220 degrees celsius. Relatively featureless when Voyager 2 flew past in 1986, it's began to display some interesting weather patterns, but from here on earth it's actually quite hard to resolve them. Neptune, the furthest planet in the solar system, is far from boring. The intense wind chill would have you forgetting it's actually minus 218 degrees celsius, because these are the highest recorded sustained winds in our solar system, a mind-boggling 2100 kilometers an hour. Vortex structures can form, and in fact several were visible during Voyager 2's flyby in 1989, notably the Great Dark Spot, which disappeared several years after Voyager 2's flyby. Thanks for watching the Space Pod, I'm Jared Head. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to us on social media. And if you like what we're doing and you have a little extra change, throw some in our Patreon campaign so we can keep doing these awesome Space Pods just for you. So, until the next Space Pod, keep exploring, and don't forget to bring your sweater.