Jupiter: The Largest Planet Of Our Solar System | Information And Facts

Jupiter:

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun and is the largest planet of the solar system. Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all planets combined together.

Jupiter's Profile:

Distance from Sun: 778.5 million km
Mass: 1.898 × 10^27 kg
Radius: 69,911 km

Physical Characteristics:

Jupiter is surrounded by 79 known moons. Scientists are most interested in the Galilean satellites – the four largest moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
With a radius of 43,440.7 miles (69,911 kilometres), Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth. Jupiter's immense volume could hold more than 1,300 Earths.

Jupiter has a dense core of the uncertain composition, surrounded by a helium-rich layer of fluid metallic hydrogen that extends out to 80% to 90% of the diameter of the planet.

Jupiter's atmosphere resembles that of the sun, made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. The colourful light and dark bands that surround Jupiter are created by strong east-west winds in the planet's upper atmosphere travelling more than 335 mph (539 km/h). The white clouds in the light zones are made of crystals of frozen ammonia, while darker clouds made of other chemicals are found in the dark belts. At the deepest visible levels are blue clouds. Far from being static, the stripes of clouds change over time. Inside the atmosphere, diamond rain may fill the skies.

The most extraordinary feature on Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, a giant hurricane-like storm that's lasted more than 300 years. At its widest, the Great Red Spot is about twice the size of Earth, and its edge spins counterclockwise around its centre at speeds of about 270 to 425 mph (430 to 680 km/h). The spot has been shrinking for quite some time, although the rate may be slowing in recent years.

Jupiter's magnetic field is the strongest of all the planets in the solar system at nearly 20,000 times the strength of Earth's. It traps electrically charged particles in an intense belt of electrons and other electrically charged particles that regularly blasts the planet's moons and rings with radiation more than 1,000 times the lethal level for a human, enough to damage even heavily shielded spacecraft, such as NASA's Galileo probe. The magnetosphere of Jupiter swells out some 600,000 to 2 million miles (1 million to 3 million kilometres) toward the sun and tapers to a tail extending more than 600 million miles (1 billion km) behind the massive planet.

Jupiter has the shortest day in the solar system. One day on Jupiter takes only about 10 hours (the time it takes for Jupiter to rotate or spin around once), and Jupiter makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Jovian time) in about 12 Earth years (4,333 Earth days).

Jupiter's Structure:

Jupiter is thought to consist of a dense core with a mixture of elements, a surrounding layer of liquid metallic hydrogen with some helium, and an outer layer predominantly of molecular hydrogen. The core is often described as rocky, but its detailed composition is unknown, as are the properties of materials at the temperatures and pressures of those depths. The core region may be surrounded by dense metallic hydrogen, which extends outward to about 78% of the radius of the planet. Above the layer of metallic hydrogen lies a transparent interior atmosphere of hydrogen. At this depth, the pressure and temperature are above hydrogen's critical pressure of 1.2858 MPa and critical temperature of only 32.938 K
In this state, there are no distinct liquid and gas phases—hydrogen is said to be in a supercritical fluid state. It is convenient to treat hydrogen as gas in the upper layer extending downward from the cloud layer to a depth of about 1,000 km, and as a liquid in deeper layers. Physically, there is no clear boundary—the gas smoothly becomes hotter and denser as one descends.
The temperature and pressure inside Jupiter increase steadily toward the core, due to the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism. At the pressure level of 10 bars (1 MPa), the temperature is around 340 K (67 °C; 152 °F). At the phase transition region where hydrogen—heated beyond its critical point—becomes metallic, it is calculated the temperature is 10,000 K (9,700 °C; 17,500 °F) and the pressure is 200 GPa. The temperature at the core boundary is estimated to be 36,000 K (35,700 °C; 64,300 °F) and the interior pressure is roughly 3,000–4,500 GPa.

Some Facts About Jupiter:

• Jupiter Is The Fastest Spinning Planet In The Solar System.
• The Clouds On Jupiter Are Only 50 km Thick.
• Jupiter’s Magnetic Field Is 14 Times Stronger Than Earth’s.
• Jupiter Has Been Visited 8 Times By Spacecraft.
• Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system.
• Jupiter orbits the Sun once every 11.8 Earth years.
• Jupiter has the shortest day of all the planets.

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