|
88,846 miles (142,984 km) |
||
|
Average Distance from Sun |
483,800,000 miles |
||
|
Planet Composition |
liquid hydrogen and helium surrounding a rocky core |
||
|
Atmosphere |
hydrogen, helium |
||
|
Average Temperature |
-166°F (-110°C) |
||
|
Number of Moons |
4 large, 12 small, and 12 or more newly discovered and unnamed |
||
|
4331 days (11.87 years) |
|||
|
9 hours 55 minutes |
Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, could fit over 1,000 Earth's inside it. It contains most of the solar system's mass that is not part of our Sun.
Jupiter is a massive planet with lots of gravity. A 100 pound person on Earth would weigh 240 pounds here!
Jupiter's radiation belt is composed of energetic particles trapped in the planet's powerful magnetic field. It is 1,000 percent stronger than the radiation belt surrounding Earth.
 |
Jupiter is covered with colorful clouds and storms. The colors are caused by different chemicals in the clouds. Wind speeds here measure up to 300 miles per hour. The Great Red Spot, a huge, hurricane-like storm big enough to swallow three Earth's, is over 300 years old! Jupiter rotates rapidly, giving it a flattened appearance like Saturn. Jupiter has faint rings composed of fine, rocky particles. |
Ganymede, Jupiter's Largest Moon |
Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. It is made of ice and rock, with mountains, valleys, and craters all over the surface. |
 Europa's surface |
Europa looks like it has been painted with brown, criss-crossing lines. The lines are where liquid water inside Europa breaks through cracks in the surface ice. The dirty water then flows out of the cracks and freezes, forming the brown ridges. Europa, Ganymede, and another moon, Callisto, might have slushy, salt water oceans beneath their surfaces. Maybe primitive life might be found in some of these oceans! |
Io, a moon of Jupiter |
Io is a very colorful moon, and even looks like a big round pizza. Io is caught in a gravity tug-of-war between Jupiter and Jupiter's other three large moons. This squeezes Io and heats up the inside. The heat and pressure forces molten rock to erupt from volcanoes all over the surface. A full ton of the moon is blasted out into space every second, and the material is swept away into Jupiter's magnetic field. |
www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/ The Galileo Project is a NASA unmanned mission to explore the planet Jupiter and its surrounding moons and magnetosphere. The spacecraft started its journey on October 18, 1989 with the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. The Galileo Mission consisted of an atmospheric entry probe (Galileo Probe) designed to enter Jupiter's atmosphere, and an orbiter (Galileo Orbiter) designed to orbit the planet and observe Jupiter, its moons, and radiation belts.
This homepage: ccf.arc.nasa.gov/galileo_probe/is devoted to background information and scientific results from the Galileo atmospheric entry probe portion of the mission.
The story of the Galileo Mission to Jupiter told with humor and illustrated with cartoons at eis.jpl.nasa.gov/~skientz/galileo/.
www.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/ From July 16 through July 22, 1994, pieces of an object designated as Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter. This is the first collision of two solar system bodies ever to be observed, and the effects of the comet impacts on Jupiter's atmosphere have been simply spectacular and beyond expectations.
Solar System Adventure Home | Sun | Comets | Asteroids | Mercury | Venus | Earth | Mars | Jupiter | Saturn | Uranus | Neptune | Pluto
Web page by Challe Hudson. Copyright 2001 Morehead Planetarium.