Facts About Jupiter
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the fifth planet from the sun. We’ve pursued a lot of research on the planet and know a lot of facts about Jupiter.
Facts About Jupiter
People living in Texas like to say everything is big in the state. They have no idea. Compared to Jupiter, things in Texas are microscopic.
Jupiter is so large, it has storms that are so large they would come close to completely covering the Earth. Talk about a traffic jam! Let’s look at some facts about Jupiter:
- Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun.
- Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
- Jupiter is so large, all the other planets combined would fit within it.
- Jupiter orbits the Sun slowly, making the trip once every 12 years.
- Jupiter rotates very fast with a “day” taking 10 Earth hours.
- Jupiter is not a terrestrial planet like Earth, Mars, Venus or Mercury.
- Jupiter is a gas planet held together by a massive gravity field.
- Jupiter consists primarily of hydrogen, nitrogen, helium and water.
- At its very core, Jupiter has a small metal core that is still estimated to be four times the size of Earth.
- Between the core of Jupiter and the gas surface lays a huge, dense ocean of hydrogen in a liquid metal form.
- Jupiter is essentially a sun, but without the nuclear reaction at its core required to produce light.
- The atmosphere of Jupiter consists of raging wind patters running horizontally across the planet.
- The giant red spot on Jupiter is a storm that has been raging for over 300 years.
- The red spot storm is now believed to eat other storms to obtain energy to continue raging.
- Jupiter has 64 known moons, not the 39 reported in the 1990s. With improvements in observing technology, more discoveries are expected.
- Much like the Sun holds the planets, Jupiter captured most of its moons with its massive gravity pull.
- Jupiter contains 71 percent of all of the planetary mass in our solar system.
- Jupiter’s has rings that consist of dust and meteoroids.
- Jupiter’s rings are roughly 140,000 kilometers wide.
- Jupiter was believed to have three rings, but actually has four.
- The visible rings of Jupiter are known as Gossamer, Halo and the inner ring.
- The new ring is closer to the planet, not visible from Earth and rotates the opposite direction of the other rings. It was discovered by the Galileo probe.
- Jupiter’s mass is roughly 320 times that of the Earth.
As the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter is dominant in the night sky. From a practical standpoint, more scientists now consider it to be a star that failed to ignite. If it had, how different would our solar system have been and would we even exist? The facts about Jupiter suggest not.
