Jupiter is the largest planet of our solar system. It is the fifth planet from the sun and is situated between the planets of Mars and Saturn. Together with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, Jupiter is referred to as a Jovian planet. Jupiter is the planet that is visible to the naked eye owing to its enormous structure. Romans named this planet after the king of Roman Gods ‘Jupiter’. It is made up of helium and hydrogen gases and thus is not a solid planet but a huge gas mass just like its fellow Jovian planets.
List of interesting facts about the planet Jupiter:
Following are a list of interesting facts about the planet Jupiter:
- It is the fourth brightest object in the sky after the Sun, the Moon and planet Venus and is also known as ‘the ruler of the night skies’.
- The mass of Jupiter is 318 times more than the mass of the Earth. Jupiter weighs 2.5 times more than all the masses of the other planets combined.
- It is the fastest spinning planet of the Solar system. The planet takes only about 10 hours to complete a full rotation on its axis. The rapid rotation also accounts in the build of powerful magnetic fields and are responsible for the dangerous radiations surrounding it.
- There are clouds on the planet that are only 50 km thick and are made up of ammonia crystals and broken up into two different cloud decks.
- There is a huge spot on the planet which is known as the Great Red Spot. It was discovered almost 350 years ago. A century ago it measured about 40,000 km but now it has shrunk to half its size.
- Jupiter has rings and was the third planet with rings to be discovered after Saturn and Uranus. Jupiter’s rings are lighter in appearance than the ones on Saturn and are believed to have been a result of materials ejected from its moons when it would have been impacted by meteors.
- Jupiter has 63 moons and each of them measure less than 10 km in diameter. One of its moons called Ganymede is the largest satellite in the Solar system measuring up to 5262 km across.
- It was only in 1973 that the first spacecraft landed on the Jupiter and discovered these moons. Since then it has been visited 7 times from the Earth.
- The gravity of the planet is so high that anything and everything that passes through the planet gets pulled towards it.
- One of the moons of Jupiter is volcanically active.
- Jupiter emits bizarre sounds called electromagnetic voices which are recorded by the NASA-Voyager.
- Given the fact that Jupiter rotates at a really fast rate, the planet shows structural modifications of being flat at the poles and bulging at the equator.
- Jupiter probably has a small solid core in the center. As the clouds move closer to the core their density increases thus turning them into a giant ocean of liquid hydrogen. Because the pressure near the center is so enormous the liquid hydrogen takes a form of a metallic core that surrounds the rock solid core thus creating a powerful magnetic field.
- The planet gives off more heat than it receives from the Sun.
- Because it has 16 moons and several rings it is known to be a mini solar system in itself.
