ConceptCheck 7-1: No. All solid objects must have nondifferential rotation or else they would break apart.

ConceptCheck 7-2: If the planets formed with the same chemical composition, then helium in Saturn’s colder atmosphere must have condensed and moved deeper inside, resulting in Saturn appearing to be mostly hydrogen.

ConceptCheck 7-3: White ovals are long-lasting, low-temperature, high-altitude features that obscure views of what lies underneath, whereas brown ovals are openings in Jupiter’s cloud cover that emit infrared energy to be observed from lower altitudes.

ConceptCheck 7-4: Jupiter has significantly more mass, and as a result the cloud layers are gravitationally compressed much more on Jupiter than on less massive Saturn.

ConceptCheck 7-5: Methane in Uranus’s atmosphere absorbs the Sun’s longer wavelengths of light, so if it were absent, Uranus would have more reds and, as a result, appear more yellow-white, like Saturn.

ConceptCheck 7-6: We usually think of “weather” being driven in the atmosphere by the Sun’s energy; and because Neptune is so far from the Sun, the surprising activity in Neptune’s atmosphere must be driven by unexpected energy coming from within Neptune.

ConceptCheck 7-7: Titan is shrouded by a thick atmosphere that does not transmit visible light.

ConceptCheck 7-8: Geyserlike plumes visible in Voyager 2 images all point in the same direction, suggesting that the ejected material is being carried downwind within a thin atmosphere.

ConceptCheck 7-9: As Saturn travels around the Sun, the tilted and quite thin rings are sometimes seen “face-on” and are easily observed, whereas other times Earth’s position makes them “edge-on” and nearly invisible.

ConceptCheck 7-10: An asteroid orbiting Earth within Earth’s Roche limit for enough time would be ripped apart by Earth’s gravitational attraction differing on the near side and the far side of the asteroid, resulting in a tiny ring around Earth.

ConceptCheck 7-11: Saturn’s ring particles are more reflective, being composed of mostly ice, and many times larger than the less reflective and smaller ring particles of the other planets.