Amazing Facts about Jupiter

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, it is two and half times more massive than all the other planets combined.  Jupiter is made up of gases and known as gas giant.  It is fifth planet out from the Sun.

Amazing facts about Jupiter.

1.  After the Sun, the Moon and Venus, Jupiter is the brightest planet making it fourth brightest object in the solar system.

2.  Jupiter is one of the five planets that are visible from Earth with naked eye.

3.  Jupiter is first observed by ancient Babylonians, and was seen in many civilizations.

4.  Jupiter completes its rotation in 9 hours and 55 minutes, thus it has the shortest day of all the planets in the solar system.

5.  Jupiter has an oblate shape due to it’s rapid rotation, which flattens the planet slightly.

6.  It takes 11.6 earth years for Jupiter to complete it’s orbit around the sun.

7.  Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is divided into cloud belts and zones and it has unique cloud features.  The upper atmosphere is made of sulphur, ammonia crystals and mixture of the two compounds.

8.  The Great Red Spot lasted for at least 350 years, which is a huge storm on Jupiter.

9.  Jupiter’s atmosphere is mostly made up of hydrogen, below this there are layers of liquid metallic hydrogen, compressed hydrogen gas and a core of ice, rocks and metals.

10.  Ganymeade, Callisto lo and Europa are the largest satellites of Jupiter.  Jupiter’s satellites are also known as Jovian satellites.  Ganymeade is larger than the planet Mercury, has a diameter of 5,268 km making it the largest moon in the solar system.

11.  Jupiter has  thin  rings like Saturn, which are hardly visible.

12.  Jupiter has the highest gravitational force of all planets in the solar system.  The sun has the gravitational pull higher than Jupiter.

13.  Jupiter is called the vacuum cleaner of solar system as  it sucks comets, asteroids and other things.

14.  Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, which is approximately 14 times as strong as earth.

Statistical facts about Jupiter :

1.  Jupiter is approximately 318 times heavier than earth, it has a mass of 1,898,130,000,000,000,000 billion kg.

2.  142,984 km is the equatorial diameter of Jupiter.

3.  133,709 km is the polar diameter of Jupiter.

4.  Jupiter has 67 satellites, of them the notable ones are lo,Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

5.  778,340,821 km is the orbit distance of Jupiter.

6.  4,332.82 earth days is the orbit period of Jupiter.

7.  Jupiter has a surface temperature of -148 degrees centigrade.

Also read: All the articles on Amazing facts about Nature and Planets