Jupiter was the king of the gods in Roman mythology, and the planet is the king of the family of the Sun. This gas giant is over eleven times the diameter of Earth. Jupiter is in first place among planets in a number of ways. It's atmospheric features can be easily seen through a small telescope. These features definitely change over time. The most notable feture in the clouds of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot.Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field which might sound like this. It rotates the fastest. It has, by far, the greatest mass in the solar system, second only to the Sun itself. Jupiter has been visited by a number of space probes from the United States. And the European Space Agency successfully launched a probe to Jupiter called JUICE. The first probe to Jupiter was Pioneer 10, which was sent to the planet in the early 1970’s with a very controversial plaque mounted on its side. . Pioneer 10 is still out there, headed for a possible encounter with other intelligent life. Following that was the immensely successful Voyager missions. Each of the two Voyager probes had thier own message from Earth. After Voyager, the Galileo probe was the most sophisticated craft ever sent to Jupiter to that point. It included an atmospheric entry probe. These probes have returned thousands of images of the jovian system. Here is NASA’s legacy site for the mission, which has now ended.Right now, the probe called Juno is in orbit around Jupiter, collecting more data on the giant planet.Jupiter also stands out in the solar system with its great number of natural satellites.
Jupiter has a radius of 71,492 km acrossthe equator, which is 11.2 times that of Earth. It is less from pole to pole whichmakes the planet noticeably flattened.
Jupiter’s sidereal period of rotation is 9 hours 56 minutes referenced to the stars. For an object more than ten times larger than Earth, it takes less than half the time to spin once.
Jupiter orbits the Sun at an average distance of 5.2 A.U. and takes 11.86 years to complete one revolution.
Jupiter is all atmosphere, pretty much. It consists of 90% hydrogen and 10% helium, by volume. There are traces of some organic compounds which give the clouds their color
Strongest of all planets. It is thought to be generated by a layer of the interior consisting of liquid metallic hydrogen.Intense radiation zones surround the Jupiter has a metallic hydrogen layer, we think, which might be responsible for the planet's huge magnetic field. The magnetic field traps solar wind particles and makes for a very exciting environment around the planet. Here is how it might sound.
The ring of Jupiter is a dusty ring, invisible from Earth. It seems to consist of ground-up asteroid dust. It was first imaged by Voyager I in 1979. Different parts of the ring have different sized particles, giving the ring system a somewhat complicated structure, as seen in these images.
At last count, Jupiter has 67 moons. The four big ones ( Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto ) were discovered by Galileo. Here's a java applet that will show you the current alignment of these four moons. Some of the remaining moons might be captured minor planets. Jupiter's ring, seen in these images, consists of fine dust particles probably knocked off the inner moons.