Jupiter is basically a turbulent, stormy, whirlpool of wind, banded with variable belts and a giant "Red Spot. The storm is by far the largest of similar ovals found on other parts of Jupiter and the other gas giants. Jupiter's wind appears to be driven by internal heat rather than from solar insolation. A probe dropped by the Galileo spacecraft late in provided evidence of wind speeds of more than mph and some lightning.
Average distance from Sun: Average distance from the center of a planet to the center of the Sun. Perihelion: The point in a planet's orbit closest to the Sun. Aphelion: The point in a planet's orbit furthest from the Sun. Sidereal Rotation: The time for a body to complete one rotation on its axis relative to the fixed stars such as our Sun. Earth's sidereal rotation is 23 hours, 57 minutes. Length of Day: The average time for the Sun to move from the Noon position in the sky at a point on the equator back to the same position.
Axis tilt: Imagining that a body's orbital plane is perfectly horizontal, the axis tilt is the amount of tilt of the body's equator relative to the body's orbital plane. Earth is tilted an average of A side note: Beginning on July 16, , 21 large fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 bombarded Jupiter over a six day period. The fragments impacted the planet in a systematic order, one after the other at , mph.
This provided a pyrotechnic show of unbelievable proportions. The impact of the comet's fragments released massive plumes of gas into Jupiter's atmosphere, emitting huge fireballs and leaving scarring behind. One of the largest fragments impacted Jupiter with a force of 6 million megatons of TNT and produced a plume about 1, miles high and 5, miles wide.
It left a dark discoloration larger than Earth. The top image to the left shows an impact from fragment "G" on Jupiter. The dark discoloration at the lower left is from fragments "G" and "D". The lower right impact is from fragment "L". Please Contact Us. Please try another search. Multiple locations were found. One astronomical unit abbreviated as AU , is the distance from the Sun to Earth. From this distance, it takes Sunlight 43 minutes to travel from the Sun to Jupiter.
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, Earth days.
Its equator is tilted with respect to its orbital path around the Sun by just 3 degrees. This means Jupiter spins nearly upright and does not have seasons as extreme as other planets do. With four large moons and many smaller moons, Jupiter forms a kind of miniature solar system. Jupiter has 53 confirmed moons and 26 provisional moons awaiting confirmation of discovery. Moons are named after they are confirmed. Jupiter's four largest moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — were first observed by the astronomer Galileo Galilei in using an early version of the telescope.
These four moons are known today as the Galilean satellites, and they're some of the most fascinating destinations in our solar system. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system even bigger than the planet Mercury.
A liquid-water ocean with the ingredients for life may lie beneath the frozen crust of Europa, making it a tempting place to explore. Discovered in by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, Jupiter's rings were a surprise, as they are composed of small, dark particles and are difficult to see except when backlit by the Sun.
Data from the Galileo spacecraft indicate that Jupiter's ring system may be formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's small innermost moons. Jupiter took shape when the rest of the solar system formed about 4. Jupiter took most of the mass left over after the formation of the Sun, ending up with more than twice the combined material of the other bodies in the solar system.
In fact, Jupiter has the same ingredients as a star, but it did not grow massive enough to ignite. About 4 billion years ago, Jupiter settled into its current position in the outer solar system, where it is the fifth planet from the Sun. The composition of Jupiter is similar to that of the Sun — mostly hydrogen and helium. Deep in the atmosphere, pressure and temperature increase, compressing the hydrogen gas into a liquid. This gives Jupiter the largest ocean in the solar system — an ocean made of hydrogen instead of water.
Scientists think that, at depths perhaps halfway to the planet's center, the pressure becomes so great that electrons are squeezed off the hydrogen atoms, making the liquid electrically conducting like metal.
Jupiter's fast rotation is thought to drive electrical currents in this region, generating the planet's powerful magnetic field. It is still unclear if deeper down, Jupiter has a central core of solid material or if it may be a thick, super-hot and dense soup.
It could be up to 90, degrees Fahrenheit 50, degrees Celsius down there, made mostly of iron and silicate minerals similar to quartz. The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet crush, melt, and vaporize spacecraft trying to fly into the planet. Jupiter's appearance is a tapestry of colorful cloud bands and spots. The gas planet likely has three distinct cloud layers in its "skies" that, taken together, span about 44 miles 71 kilometers.
The atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium , but the visible clouds are ammonia. Underneath, there are water clouds. Even after over years, the winds have largely remained unchanged, although the intensity of the colors and width of the bands have varied.
Explore Interact with the hotspots below to learn more. Because it gets hotter the farther you go into Jupiter, these regions, which are gray-blue in color, appear hotter than the cloudy areas that cover the rest of the planet.
Called hotspots, these areas glow brightly in infrared light. In , the Galileo spacecraft dropped a probe into Jupiter and it happened to fall into one of these hotspots. It was akin to an alien craft visiting Earth for the first time and landing in a desert. We have a general idea of what happens in a hotspot. When Jovian air enters such a region, it sinks into the hotter depths of Jupiter, where it warms up and dries out. As it flows out of the hotspot a few days later, it rises back to its original altitude.
A process called convection drives the formation of the clouds — the same basic way that clouds on Earth form. As the hot gases rise, they cool and condense into liquid droplets or ice crystals to form clouds. Jet streams on Earth are generated in a similar fashion.
Jupiter seems to have at least three major cloud layers made out of different chemicals. Each layer sits at an altitude where the temperature is cold enough for the respective chemicals to condense. The next layer consists of ammonia hydrosulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. Farther down are water-ice clouds, which likely sit on top of a blanket of water-ammonia fog that covers the planet.
Juno will determine how much water is in each of these layers. One possible reason is that a combination of lightning and sunlight somehow alters the ice at high altitudes, producing orange and brown hues. Organic compounds — molecules containing carbon — and sulfur compounds are most likely the chemicals that give the clouds their colors. Jupiter is filled with swirling storms that originate in the water-cloud layer — or perhaps even deeper.
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