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Jupiter
Jupiter
The fifth planet from the Sun is the planetary giant, over 300 times the mass and 1,000 times the volume of the Earth. It has a mass two and a half times more than all of the other planets in the Solar System combined.
It is, like the Sun, mainly made of nine-tenths hydrogen and one- tenth helium. If it were much bigger, the gravity of the planet would pull the gases together
and turn it into a star. It radiates twice as much heat as it gets from the Sun. Jupiter, some
780 million km from the Sun, rotates once every 10 hours,
but orbits the Sun only once every 12 years.
Jupiter began as a small
rocky planet two or three
times the mass of the Earth.
That was enough to hold a huge atmosphere and to compress
the gases near the surface into a liquid. Today, the planet still has
a small rocky core, surrounded
by thick layers of metallic and liquid hydrogen and helium, which merge into the “atmosphere” of hydrogen and helium. Jupiter
also has an enormously powerful magnetic field.
The atmosphere has winds and clouds that flow in streams parallel to the equator; they correspond to the broad
colored bands that can be seen with a telescope.
The dark bands on the surface are places where gases in the atmosphere are plummeting down to the surface, while the light- colored bands are places where the gases in the atmosphere are rising. The Great Red Spot is a storm bigger than the Earth. It is a very long-lasting feature
 Jupiter—The largest of the planets; this view shows the Great Red Spot near the bottom left.
of the atmosphere and has been observed since 1831.
Jupiter has 16 known moons. The four brightest are called
the Galilean moons and are bright enough to be seen with binoculars. (See also: Adrastra; Callisto; Europa; Galileo probe; Ganymede; Io; Voyager.)
 Jupiter/Io—Io shown orbiting Jupiter. Notice the wavelike shapes on Jupiter. They are formed by bands of clouds racing in opposite directions.
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