Interesting Facts About Jupiter Planet

 

  1. With a radius of 43,440.7 miles (69,911 kilometers), Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth. If Earth were the size of a nickel, Jupiter would be about as big as a basketball.
  2. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun in the solar system and the largest of all.
  3. The mass of Jupiter is 1,898,130,000,000,000,000 billion kg, which is 317.83 times the mass of Earth.
  4. Jupiter is so massive that its total mass is twice as much as the mass of all planets in Solar System combined together. Jupiter is capable of holding 1300 Earths in it.
  5. Jupiter could have been a star had it been 80 times more massive than what it is today.
  6. Jupiter could have been a star had it been 80 times more massive than what it is today

  7. Being the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter was rightly named after the king of all gods in Roman Mythology. The Romans called this planet Jupiter because it was the largest object in the sky.
  8. Jupiter is 318 times heavier than Earth.
  9. Jupiter is the third brightest planet in the night sky after Earth’s moon and Venus.
  10. Jupiter has the shortest day of all the planets. One day on Jupiter takes about 10 hours. It spins around on its axis once every 9 hr 55 min 29.69 sec.
  11. One year on Jupiter is equal to 12 years on Earth.
  12. One year on Jupiter is equal to 12 years on Earth.

  13. The length of each season on Jupiter is roughly three years.
  14. Jupiter is a gas giant planet and therefore does not have a solid surface. Jupiter may have a solid, inner core about the size of Earth.
  15. Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field in the solar system, except that of the Sun.
  16. Jupiter is also nicknamed “vacuum cleaner of the solar system” because of its ability to attract other heavenly bodies into it due to its sheer mass and strong magnetic field.
  17. If a person could stand on the clouds at the top of Jupiter’s atmosphere, the force of gravity he or she would feel would be about 2.4 times the force of gravity on the surface of Earth.
  18. If a person could stand on the clouds at the top of Jupiter’s atmosphere, the force of gravity he or she would feel would be about 2.4 times the force of gravity on the surface of Earth.

  19. A person who weighs 100 pounds on Earth would weigh about 240 pounds on Jupiter.
  20. Jupiter is famous for its Great Red Spot, which is a giant spot observed first in the 17th century. The giant Red Spot is a dust storm that is so immense that it gets larger than the size of Earth.
  21. Jupiter’s atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen (H2) and helium (He).
  22. The upper atmosphere of Jupiter is divided into cloud belts and zones. They are made primarily of ammonia crystals, sulfur, and mixtures of the two compounds.
  23. Deep under Jupiter’s clouds is a huge ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen. On Earth, hydrogen is usually gas. But on Jupiter, the pressure is so great inside its atmosphere that the gas becomes liquid.
  24. Deep under Jupiter’s clouds is a huge ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen.

  25. Jupiter is a windy planet. It experiences wind speeds of 192 mph to more than 400 mph.
  26. Blue clouds can be seen at the deepest visible levels of Jupiter’s atmosphere.
  27. Jupiter has 53 known moons, with an additional 14 moons awaiting confirmation of their discovery — that is a total of 67 moons.
  28. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system.
  29. Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury and three-fourths the size of Mars. Ganymede is the only moon in the solar system known to have its own magnetic field.
  30. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system.

  31. Io, the third largest moon of Jupiter, is the most volcanically active body in our solar system.
  32. Four of the Jupiter’s moons were discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. These are the largest of all the moons that Jupiter has and are called the Galilean satellites.
  33. Pioneer was the first mission launched to study Jupiter in 1972.
  34. Jupiter has a faint ring system that was discovered in 1979 by the Voyager 1 mission. All four giant planets in our solar system have ring systems.
  35. Jupiter cannot support life as we know it. However, some of Jupiter’s moons have oceans underneath their crusts that might support life.
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Also read: 40 Interesting and Fun Facts About Saturn
 

Significant Dates:

  • 1610: Galileo Galilei makes the first detailed observations of Jupiter.
  • 1973: Pioneer 10 becomes the first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt and fly past Jupiter.
  • 1979: Voyager 1 and 2 discover Jupiter’s faint rings, several new moons and volcanic activity on Io’s surface.
  • 1992: Ulysses swung by Jupiter on Feb. 8, 1992. The giant planet’s gravity bent the spacecraft’s flight path southward and away from the ecliptic plane, putting the probe into a final orbit that would take it over the sun’s south and north poles.
  • 1994: Astronomers observe as pieces of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collide with Jupiter’s southern hemisphere.
  • 1995-2003: The Galileo spacecraft drops a probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere and conducts extended observations of Jupiter and its moons and rings.
  • 2000: Cassini makes its closest approach to Jupiter at a distance of approximately 6.2 million miles (10 million kilometers), taking a highly detailed true-color mosaic photo of the gas giant.
  • 2007: Images were taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, on the way to Pluto, show new perspectives on Jupiter’s atmospheric storms, the rings, volcanic Io, and icy Europa.
  • 2009: On 20 July, almost exactly 15 years after fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy slammed into Jupiter, a comet or asteroid crashes into the giant planet’s southern hemisphere.
  • 2011: Juno launches to examine Jupiter’s chemistry, atmosphere, interior structure, and magnetosphere.
  • 2016: NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, conducting an in-depth investigation of the planet’s atmosphere, deep structure, and magnetosphere for clues to its origin and evolution.

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