Jupiter

One of the brightest objects in the night sky, Jupiter is only outshone by Venus and the Moon, both of which are a lot closer to the Earth.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System as well as fastest spinning planet. Because it spins so fast, it’s shape is funny – it is a little bit flat like someone stepped on it (but not as flat as Saturn). This funny shape is called an oblate spheroid. The atmosphere (the gases that make it up) is like the atmosphere of the sun (primarily helium & hydrogen).

The most outstanding feature of Jupiter is the giant red spot, which is a storm with winds that blow 680 km/hr (mph).

Jupiter has 79 moons (That’s a LOT of Moons!!) Ganymede, Io, and Europa are the best-known Moons and if humans decide to go there, we will most likely land on one of them.

How big is Jupiter compared to Earth?

Jupiter is a giant — it’s 11 times wider than Earth! If you could open it up like a giant space suitcase, you could fit more than 1,300 Earths inside.

How long does it take for Jupiter to orbit the Sun?

A year on Jupiter (one trip around the Sun) takes about 12 Earth years — that’s a lot of birthdays to wait for! But its days are super short: Jupiter spins so fast that one whole day is only about 10 hours long.

What is the surface of Jupiter like?

Jupiter doesn’t have a solid surface you could land on. It’s made of swirling gases and liquids, kind of like a never-ending storm. If you tried to go inside, the extreme pressure and heat would squish and smash anything that got too close.

A close-up view of an astronaut's bootprint in the lunar soil, photographed with a 70mm lunar surface camera during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA) on the moon. While astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, commander, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" to explore the Sea of Tranquility region of the moon, astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "Columbia" in lunar orbit. Image Credit: NASA
Apollo Astronaut James B. Irwin, lunar module pilot, works at the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the first Apollo 15 lunar surface extravehicular activity (EVA) at the Hadley-Apennine landing site. The shadow of the Lunar Module "Falcon" is in the foreground. This view is looking northeast, with Mount Hadley in the background. This photograph was taken by astronaut David R. Scott, commander. Image Credit: NASA
NASA's Galileo spacecraft took this image of Earth's Moon on Dec. 7, 1992, on its way to explore the Jupiter system in 1995-97. The distinct bright ray crater at the bottom of the image is the Tycho impact basin. Image Credit: NASA

WOW! This planet is going to be really cool when we get there, but we haven’t gone there yet.

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