Jupiter is the largest
planet in our solar system. It is the fifth planet from the sun.
Jupiter has more than twice the mass of all the other planets
combined and rotates more rapidly than any other planet. It is a huge
ball of mainly gaseous hydrogen and helium. Jupiter weighs 2.5 times
as much as all the other planets rolled together. From Earth it looks
like a bright yellow "star" in the night sky, brighter than the
brightest real star, Sirius, but not nearly as bright as Venus. The
top clouds of Jupiter are as cold as -110°C. With a telescope we
can see Jupiter's clouds to a depth of about 100 kilometers, but the
dense atmosphere may extend to a depth of 1000 kilometers.
Great Red Spot:
The most prominent feature
of Jupiter's atmosphere is its Great Red Spot, which is an
anticyclonic storm. This great red spot has brought us many
mysteries. The shape of the red spot looks like a gigantic football
of gases that floats in the planet's Southern hemisphere near
the equator. Over the centuries the color of the red spot has changed
from bright red to dull red and back to bright red. Because the red
spot seems to change from time to time, it is hard to determine its
size. However, now it is large enough to fit two planets the size
of Earth. Astronomers are able to determine that the red spot
could be a super hurricane that keeps on raging continually. Just
40 years ago, three small white spots formed and somehow may be
associated with the Great Red Spot.
Great Discoveries:
In August and September of
1977 two Voyager spacecraft were launched from Cape Canaveral,
Florida, on a historic mission for a closeup view of the planet
Jupiter. They were traveling at a speed of a little more than
50,000 Km per hour, but could not keep up at that rate because of the
gravitational pull of the Earth and Sun. Eventually, the two spacecraft
were in Jupiter's gravitational pull after safely passing through the
asteroid belt. When Voyager 1 spacecraft was about seven million Km
from Jupiter, it began to send chirping signals and soon they
became a crashing roar. This happened because the spacecraft was
crossing the electrically active magnetic field of Jupiter. It is
where the solar wind particles interact with the edge of the magnetic
field. It is called the bow shock. Jupiter's magnetosphere is
huge, larger that the Sun, and its teardrop tail stretched out by the
solar wind extends to beyond the orbit of Saturn.
Jupiter has a
magnetosphere (a magnetic field). Compared with Earth's magnetic
field, Jupiter's magnetic field extends just a bit more than Earth,
but the magnetic field on Jupiter is much more powerful. The region on
Jupiter where the magnetic field is contains ions. Ions are atoms
that have been stripped of some of their electrons. The ions on
Jupiter are pushed together toward Jupiter by the solar wind. These
stream particles bombard those in the magnetosphere and produce
radiation belts around Jupiter. Particles in the belts contain
tremendous amounts of energy, so much that humans could not penetrate
them without being exposed to deadly radiation. Therefore, Jupiter is
an inhospitable place to live.
Jupiter is almost a star.
The recipe for a star includes hydrogen, helium, and other gases. Earth
could have been a star, but Earth's gravity could not hold all of
the particles together. Jupiter, however, did have enough gravity to
hold the particles when it was formed. However, there was not enough
heat produced for Jupiter to become a star.
When Galileo invented his
telescope he found rings around Saturn. Jupiter has a ring
too, but a very thin one. The ring on Jupiter consists of fine dust
particles.
Images of Jupiter
Image of Jupiter's
equator.
http://bang.lanl.gov/solarsys/Jupiter.htm
Image of Jupiter and one
of it's moon.
http://bang.lanl.gov/solarsys/Jupiter.htm
Return Back To
Home or Proceed To Next
Planet