39 Facts About Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System.

Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus, and it has been observed since prehistoric times.

Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen, but helium constitutes one-quarter of its mass and one-tenth of its volume.

The ongoing contraction of Jupiter's interior generates more heat than it receives from the Sun.

Jupiter is surrounded by a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere.

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Jupiter has 80 known moons and possibly many more, including the four large moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter, making its closest approach to the planet in December 1973.

Jupiter has since been explored by multiple robotic spacecraft, beginning with the Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions from 1973 to 1979, and later with the Galileo orbiter in 1995.

In 2007, the New Horizons visited Jupiter using its gravity to increase its speed, bending its trajectory en route to Pluto.

Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of Europa.

In both the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, Jupiter was named after the chief god of the divine pantheon: Zeus for the Greeks and Jupiter for the Romans.

Jove, the archaic name of Jupiter, came into use as a poetic name for the planet around the 14th century.

In Germanic mythology, Jupiter is equated to Thor, whence the English name Thursday for the Roman dies Jovis.

Jupiter is believed to be the oldest planet in the Solar System.

Current models of Solar System formation suggest that Jupiter formed at or beyond the snow line: a distance from the early Sun where the temperature is sufficiently cold for volatiles such as water to condense into solids.

Jupiter is a gas giant, being primarily composed of gas and liquid rather than solid matter.

Jupiter's radius is about one tenth the radius of the Sun, and its mass is one thousandth the mass of the Sun, as the densities of the two bodies are similar.

Jupiter radiates more heat than it receives through solar radiation, due to the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism within its contracting interior.

When it formed, Jupiter was hotter and was about twice its current diameter.

Data from the Juno mission showed that Jupiter has a very diffuse core that mixes into its mantle.

Orange and brown colours in the clouds of Jupiter are caused by upwelling compounds that change colour when they are exposed to ultraviolet light from the Sun.

Best known feature of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, a persistent anticyclonic storm located 22° south of the equator.

Jupiter has a faint planetary ring system composed of three main segments: an inner torus of particles known as the halo, a relatively bright main ring, and an outer gossamer ring.

Jupiter's rotation is the fastest of all the Solar System's planets, completing a rotation on its axis in slightly less than ten hours; this creates an equatorial bulge easily seen through an amateur telescope.

Jupiter is usually the fourth brightest object in the sky, although at opposition Mars can appear brighter than Jupiter.

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Favourable oppositions occur when Jupiter is passing through the perihelion of its orbit, bringing it closer to Earth.

Near opposition, Jupiter will appear to go into retrograde motion for a period of about 121 days, moving backward through an angle of 9.

Orbit of Jupiter is outside that of Earth, the phase angle of Jupiter as viewed from Earth is always less than 11.

Radio bursts from Jupiter were found to come in two forms: long bursts lasting up to several seconds, and short bursts lasting less than a hundredth of a second.

Jupiter has been visited by automated spacecraft since 1973, when the space probe Pioneer 10 passed close enough to Jupiter to send back revelations about its properties and phenomena.

Missions to Jupiter are accomplished at a cost in energy, which is described by the net change in velocity of the spacecraft, or delta-v.

The orbits of Io, Europa, and Ganymede form a pattern known as a Laplace resonance; for every four orbits that Io makes around Jupiter, Europa makes exactly two orbits and Ganymede makes exactly one.

Eccentricity of their orbits causes regular flexing of the three moons' shapes, with Jupiter's gravity stretching them out as they approach it and allowing them to spring back to more spherical shapes as they swing away.

Jupiter's moons were traditionally classified into four groups of four, based on their similar orbital elements.

Jupiter's moons are currently divided into several different groups, although there are several moons which are not part of any group.

Eight innermost regular moons, which have nearly circular orbits near the plane of Jupiter's equator, are thought to have formed alongside Jupiter, whilst the remainder are irregular moons and are thought to be captured asteroids or fragments of captured asteroids.

Jupiter family is defined as comets that have a semi-major axis smaller than Jupiter's; most short-period comets belong to this group.

Jupiter has been called the Solar System's vacuum cleaner because of its immense gravity well and location near the inner Solar System.

God Jupiter is the Roman counterpart of Zeus, and he is the principal god of Roman mythology.