Jupiter is the largest planet, a gas giant more massive than all the other planets put together, striped with cloud bands and marked by the Great Red Spot.
At a glance
| radius | 69,900 km (11 × Earth) |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 5.2 AU (778 million km) |
| sunlight takes | 43.3 minutes |
| one orbit | 11.9 years |
| orbit eccentricity | 0.049 |
| reflects | 54% of the sunlight it gets |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with.
About Jupiter
Jupiter has no solid surface to stand on. It is mostly hydrogen and helium, like the Sun, and what we see is the top of its clouds, drawn into light zones and darker belts by the fastest spin of any planet. Deep inside, the pressure squeezes hydrogen into a metallic, electrically conducting fluid, which generates the most powerful planetary magnetic field in the Solar System.
The Great Red Spot is a storm larger than Earth that has been watched since the age of the early telescopes, though it has been shrinking. Spacecraft from Pioneer and Voyager to Galileo and Juno have studied the planet up close; Juno, in orbit around its poles, found the deep interior less sharply layered than expected. Jupiter also has faint, dusty rings.
Its four large moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, were discovered by Galileo, and seeing them circle Jupiter showed that not everything in the sky goes round Earth. Jupiter’s gravity shapes much of the Solar System, herding asteroids and deflecting comets.
What you see in the piece
Jupiter is drawn with its real cloud map, banded and lit only by the sunlight it reflects. Its four large moons travel around it on their true orbits; from another star, none of them can be seen.
Questions
How big is Jupiter compared with Earth?
Jupiter’s radius is 69,900 km, about 11 × Earth’s, and it is more massive than all the other planets combined.
What is the Great Red Spot?
A giant anticyclone, a high-pressure storm in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere wider than Earth, watched since the age of the early telescopes.