35 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Jupiter | Amazing Facts 4U
- Jupiter is massive having 318 times the mass of the Earth. It would take 11 Earths lined up next to each other to stretch from one side of Jupiter to the other.
- In fact, Jupiter has 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets in the Solar System put together.
- It is made primarily of gases and is therefore known as a “gas giant”.
- The ancient Babylonians were the first to record their sightings of Jupiter around the 7th or 8th century BC. Jupiter is named after the king of the Roman gods. To the Greeks, it represented Zeus, the god of thunder.
- Interestingly, if Jupiter had managed to grab 80 times more mass than its current mass, it would actually end up being a star instead of a planet.
- The atmospheric pressure of Jupiter is 1000 times greater than that on Earth. Any human will be easily crushed to death at that pressure.
- An amazing property of Jupiter is that it emits more energy than it receives from the Sun due to it’s size which also exerts a strong gravitational force on itself, thus resulting in the compression of the planet as a whole. The cumulative effect of all this inward force is the production of a large amount of heat, which radiates into space.
- Amazing thing is if Jupiter got any more massive, it would actually make the planet more dense and start pulling it in on itself. It is estimated that Jupiter could end up with 4 times its current mass retaining it’s current size.
- Jupiter has the shortest day in the Solar System taking just 9 hours and 55 minutes to complete a full rotation on its axis.
- Jupiter’s axial tilt of 3.17° is extremely small, second lowest in the Solar System behind Mercury. Due to this Jupiter doesn’t experience seasons at all.
- Jupiter has flattened a little due to spinning and points on Jupiter’s equator are more than 4,600 km further from the center than the poles. Rapid rotation also helps generate Jupiter’s powerful magnetic fields, and contribute to the high radiation surrounding it.
- In fact the radiations emitted from Jupiter is 1000 times stronger than the lethal dose of radiation for humans.
- The mass of the core of Jupiter is 10 times the mass of our Earth and the magnetic field of Jupiter is 20,000 times stronger to that of Earth’s magnetic field.
- The entire magnetosphere of Jupiter (the magnetic fields and the charged particles) extend out to some 600 million miles behind the planet and some 600,000 miles to 2 million miles towards the Sun.
- In fact if we were able to see Jupiter’s radiation belt from Earth, Jupiter would appear as big as the Sun.
- If we were able to stand on the surface of Jupiter, we would weigh 2.5 times as much as we would weigh on Earth.
- The Clouds on Jupiter looking massive are in fact only 50 km thick made of ammonia crystals, sulfur and mixtures of the two compounds. At roughly 90% hydrogen and 10% helium, Jupiter’s composition is nearly the same as the Sun’s all the way inside. Jupiter has surface temperature of -108°C.
- Jupiter’s year is equal to about 4,333 Earth days (11.86 Earth years). From our point of view on Earth, it appears to move slowly in the sky, taking months to move from one constellation to another.
- The Great Red Spot , a huge storm on Jupiter was first seen by Giovanni Cassini in 1665. It is so large that three Earths could fit inside it. A century ago, it measured 40,000 km across, but it has shrunk to half that size. The edges of the spot spin around its center in a counterclockwise direction at a speed of 360 km (225 miles) per hour.
- The rings on the Jupiter were discovered after those on Saturn and Uranus. The Voyager 1 gets the credit for this discovery. Jupiter’s rings are 4 in number and fainter than Saturn’s possibly due to the material ejected by its moons when struck by meteorites.
- The Jupiter rings being 4 in number begins about 92,000 km above it’s cloud tops and stretches out to more than 225,000 km. They are between 2,000 to 12,500 km thick.
- Jupiter’s magnetic field is the strongest in solar system being 14 times stronger than Earth possibly due to the movements of metallic hydrogen deep inside Jupiter. This magnetic field traps ionized particles from the solar wind and accelerates them to nearly the speed of light. These particles create a dangerous belt of radiation around Jupiter which can damage spacecrafts.
- Amazing fact is that Jupiter has 67 moons most of them less than 10 kilometers in diameter. Amazingly they were discovered only after 1975, when the first spacecraft arrived at Jupiter. Well known moons are Ganymede , Callisto and Europa.
- All the larger moons i.e. Ganymede , Callisto , Europa and Lo were discovered in 1610 by astronomer Galileo Galilei. It was the first proof of celestial bodies orbiting something other than Earth.
- Jupiter has already been visited 8 times by spacecraft from Earth starting from Pioneer 10 in December 1973.
- Jupiter’s gravity is used to catapult spacecraft on deep space missions further away. This is how the Voyager missions of 1975 have managed to succeed.
- Ganymede is the largest moon which is also the largest in solar System, measuring 5262 km across making it larger than planet Mercury. It is named after the mythical Greek son of a King.
- Ganymede is the only moon in the solar system known to have a strong magnetic field.
- Ganymede has a thin atmosphere that appears to contain oxygen which is possibly freed because of water ice on the surface which is broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen by solar radiation.
- Callisto is the second largest moon in the Jupiter system . It is the most distant of the Galilean moons from Jupiter.
- Callisto has the most heavily cratered surface of any world in the solar system. The most prominent feature on Callisto is a multi-ringed impact basin called Valhalla which stretches across more than 1,800 kilometers.
- Europa is the 3 rd largest moon of Jupiter and is known for being one of the first object in space found to have a subsurface water ocean which is mainly salty water. This water body may hold twice the amount of water present on Earth.
- Europa’s diameter is about 3200 Km. It is named after a the daughter of a king in Greek mythology. It was also discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei.
- Because Europa is water-rich and has a warm interior, scientists think it could be hospitable to life.
- Lo , one of the moons of Jupiter is the most volcanically active celestial body in Solar System. It has yellow orange appearance because of the sulfur spewed out by its volcanos. The reason is it is closest to Jupiter and it’s gravitational pull raises the solid surface of Io to a height of 100 mtrs generating tremendous amounts of heat enough to trigger volcanic activities.
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