Jupiter facts?

Answer 1

Jupiter is the king of planets !

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, but it spins very quickly on its axis. A day on Jupiter lasts only 9 hours and 55 minutes.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest. Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined (the mass of Jupiter is 318 times that of Earth)


Jupiter Fast Facts

Distance from Sun
Approximately 466 million miles

Number of Moons
61 moons have been identified
Ganymede is the largest moon -- it is bigger than both Mercury and Pluto

Diameter
85,788 miles
the largest planet -- more than 12 Earths could line up across it!
scientists use the planet's gravity to accelerate spacecraft so they can reach Saturn, Uranus and Neptune

Composition
a giant ball of mostly hydrogen and helium

Length of Day
9 hours, 55 minutes in Earth time (the length of one rotation)

Length of a Year
12 Earth years (the length of one orbit around the sun)

Name
named for the king of the Roman gods.

Visited by
Pioneer 11, Viking, Galileo, Cassini and others




source: NASA - Voyager

Jupiter's Spot

One of the most familiar facts about Jupiter is that it has a big red spot known as Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

What is Jupiter's Great Red Spot?
The red spot is a huge storm that has been continuously going on Jupiter for over 400 years. Winds inside this storm reach speeds of about 270 mph. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, this storm is almost twice the size of the entire Earth.

Is that the only storm on Jupiter?
Jupiter looks swirly from a distance. It is a gaseous planet -- its atmosphere is like an ocean of gases. The currents in these gases -- similar to wind here on Earth -- cause ever changing swirls.

Why are the winds so colorful?
We don't know! Scientists believe a combination of sulfur and phosphorus in the atmosphere make the lovely colors. But we still aren't sure why the swirls continue to change. Some believe the winds, and thus the changes, are caused by the internal heat of the planet while others feel they occur because of Jupiter's fast rotation speed.

Rings on Jupiter?

When Voyager visited the outer planets of the solar system we discovered that all of the gaseous planets have rings.

Jupiter's rings are much thinner and therefore less visible than Saturn's but they're there! Even up close and personal, the spacecraft needed to be at just the right angle to spot the rings.

In July 1994, scientists got an amazing treat when they were able to watch Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crash into Jupiter and leave a series of bruises in its cloud tops. Jupiter, being the second largest object in the solar system after the Sun, attracts comets and other space rocks in its vicinity by its large gravity.

Jupiter had 62 moons at last count. Smaller ones are found frequently through close examination of photographs. Just as Jupiter pulls in comets that crash into its surface, it also pulls in other space rocks such as those from the nearby Asteroid Belt, which enter into orbit around the planet, becoming new satellites.

Answer 2

Jupiter Fact File

Answer 3

Jupiter's atmosphere is very active. Its energy causes a circular storm known as the Great Red Spot. This planet takes about 10 hours to make one rotation and almost 12 Earth years to orbit the sun.Jupiter's atmosphere is composed of 90% hydrogen and 10 % helium. The temperature at the top of the cloud layers is about 202 degrees below zero. The gases surrounding the planet are moving at different speeds, creating bands of colors in the cloud layers.Gary Dominicus

Answer 4

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Jupiter facts?

Answer 5

Jupiter is about 1,000 times the volume of Earth, and the sun is about 1,000 times the volume of Jupiter. That's not exactly true of course, but it's approximately true. Jupiter is 11 times the radius of earth, and the sun is a little over 100 times the radius of earth. Either way. Volume is described as the cube of the radius

Answer 6

The chief ancient Roman and Italian god. Like Zeus, the Greek god with whom he is etymologically identical (root diu, "bright"), Jupiter was a sky god. One of his most ancient epithets is Lucetius ("Light-Bringer"); and later literature has preserved the same idea in such phrases as sub Iove, "under the open sky." As Jupiter Elicius he was propitiated with a peculiar ritual to send rain in time of drought; as Jupiter Fulgur he had an altar in the Campus Martius, and all places struck by lightning were made his property and were guarded from the profane by a circular wall.

Answer 7

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
Jupiter takes about 12 years to orbit the sun and rotates in about 10 hours. This short Jupiter "day" is amazing since the planet is roughly 11 Earth diameters wide.

Unlike the rocky planets, Jupiter is a ball of dense hydrogen, helium, water, nitrogen and other gases over a tiny rocky core. Powerful winds dominate the atmosphere with criss-crossing jet streams, lightning and huge hurricane-like storms like the Great Red Spot. This storm has been raging for over 300 years and is about 2 Earth diameters wide. The Great Red Spot can be seen on Jupiter along with four moons: Io (smallest), Europa, Callisto and Ganymede

The planet had 39 known moons at the time of this image and a slight ring of smoke-sized particles and dust. The planet contains 71% of the planetary matter in the solar system and so its huge gravity pulls every object toward it. In fact, most of its moons were captured rather than forming with Jupiter. Scientists watched in awe as comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up and smashed into Jupiter making explosions the size of the Earth.

New Moons for Jupiter
Scientists keep finding more moons orbiting Jupiter. In May of 2002 Scott S. Sheppard and David C. Jewitt of the University of Hawaii announced the discovery of 11 new moons around the planet. As of March, 2003, Jupiter had 52 confirmed satellites. These newest moons are all no more than 2 to 4 kilometers across (if their surfaces are very dark), they all have retrograde (backward) orbits, and take somewhere between 557 and 773 days to orbit. These latest moonlets were announced by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) on Circular number 8089. In April, 2003, 8 more moons were confirmed for a total of 60 moons with the possibility of more as the search continues.

The author, Gary Nugent, describes how to use the applet:

"The distances of the satellites from Jupiter are in proportion to that of the real Jovian system.


Jupiter's Rings
Jupiter's main ring system is formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's four small inner moons Almathea, Thebe, Adrastea and Metis. The ring system begins about 92,000 kilometers (55,000 miles) from Jupiter's center and extends to about 250,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) from the planet. NASA's Voyager 2 detected an uneven dust ring around Jupiter in 1979. One Voyager image seemed to indicate a third, faint outer ring. The Galileo spacecraft found a flattened main ring and an inner, cloud-like ring, called the halo, both composed of small, dark particles, and a third ring known as the Gossamer Ring. The third ring is actually two very thin rings made up of debris from Amalthea and Thebe. Unlike Saturn's rings, there are no signs of ice in Jupiter's rings. Click image or here for larger view of this NASA/JPL diagram.

Recently, scientists have found evidence for a new ring of dust in a backward orbit around Jupiter, based on computer simulations and data collected by a dust detector aboard the Galileo spacecraft. A faint, doughnut-shaped ring of interplanetary and interstellar dust some 1,126,000 kilometers in diameter (about 700,000 miles) appears to be orbiting the giant planet. The reason for the backward orbit of the tiny particles is not known.

Quick Facts about Jupiter
Topic
Data

Diameter
142,984 km

Density
1.33 g/cm3

Mass
1.900 x 1027 kg

Volume
1.377 x 1015 km3

Temperature Range
-163° C to >-121° C

Atmosphere
Hydrogen, Helium, Methane

Winds
Up to 150 m/s

Moons
60

Average Distance from Sun
778,330,000 km

Orbital Period
11 Years, 315 Days, 1.1 Hours

Rotation
0 Days, 9.925 Hours

Tilt
3.13°

Rings
Yes

Composition
Hydrogen and Helium

Magnetic Field
Extends 1,600,000 km

Answer 8

jupiter is a planet

Answer 9

try wikipedia