Jupiter (redirected from Physical characteristics of Jupiter)

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Jupiter (jo͞o`pətər), in astronomy, 5th planet from the sun and largest planet of the solar system.

How Did Jupiter Get its Name?

Jupiter has been known since very ancient times, so how did Jupiter get its name? While it had many
names throughout history, the Roman empire had the greatest influence over a wide portion of
modern society, so the names accorded to planets by the Romans still hold sway over astronomy. The
Romans named the planet after their king of gods, Jupiter, who was also the god of the sky and of
thunder. Why choose to name the planet Jupiter? It was the largest object in the sky; therefore the
most powerful; therefore Jupiter.

In the Roman pantheon, Jupiter began as the sky god, concerned mainly with wine festivals and
associated with the sacred oak of the Capitol. Eventually, he was attributed the spoils of war and
became a god of war. It was believed that he caused the armies to stand strong and be victorious. He
was the main witness in all oaths. Jupiter was the central god in the Capitoline Triad along with Juno
and Minerva. He remained Rome’s chief official deity throughout the Republican and Imperial eras,
until the pagan system was replaced by Christianity. Jupiter granted Rome supremacy because he
was ”the fount of the auspices upon which the relationship of the city with the gods rested”. He
personified the divine authority of Rome’s highest offices, internal organization, and external
relations: his image in the Republican and Imperial Capitol bore regalia associated with Rome’s
ancient kings and the highest consular and Imperial honors. Roman consuls swore their oath of office
in Jupiter’s name. To thank him for his help, and to secure his continued support, they offered him a
white, castrated ox with gilded horns.

It is common practice for a planet, moon, and many other celestial bodies to get their names from
Greek or Roman mythology as well as derive their astronomical symbol from that particular
personality. Some examples are Neptune the God of the Sea, Mars the God of War, Mercury the
Messenger, Saturn the God of Time and father of Jupiter, Uranus the father of Saturn, Venus the
Goddess of Love, and Earth, well, Earth is the only planet to buck the Greco-Roman tradition.

REF: https://www.universetoday.com/14479/how-did-jupiter-get-its-name/

What Is Jupiter?

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. It is approximately 143,000 kilometers (about 89,000
miles) wide at its equator. Jupiter is so large that all of the other planets in the solar system could fit
inside it. More than 1,300 Earths would fit inside Jupiter.

Jupiter is like a star in composition. If Jupiter had been about 80 times more massive, it would have
become a star rather than a planet.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun. Jupiter's average distance from the sun is 5.2 astronomical
units, or AU. This distance is a little more than five times the distance from Earth to the sun. When
viewed from Earth, Jupiter is usually the second brightest planet in the night sky, after Venus. The
planet is named after Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods in mythology.

What Is Jupiter Like?

Jupiter is called a gas giant planet. Its atmosphere is made up of mostly hydrogen gas and helium gas,
like the sun. The planet is covered in thick red, brown, yellow and white clouds. The clouds make the
planet look like it has stripes.

One of Jupiter’s most famous features is the Great Red Spot. It is a giant spinning storm, resembling a
hurricane. At its widest point, the storm is about 3 1/2 times the diameter of Earth. Jupiter is very
windy. Winds range from 192 mph to more than 400 mph.

Jupiter has three thin rings that are difficult to see. NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft discovered the rings
in 1979. Jupiter’s rings are made up mostly of tiny dust particles.

Jupiter rotates, or spins, faster than any other planet. One rotation equals one day. Jupiter's day is
only about 10 hours long. Jupiter’s orbit around the sun is elliptical, or oval-shaped. Jupiter takes 12
Earth years to make one revolution around the sun, so one year on Jupiter is equal to 12 years on
Earth.

The temperature in the clouds of Jupiter is about minus 145 degrees Celsius (minus 234 degrees
Fahrenheit). The temperature near the planet's center is much, much hotter. The core temperature
may be about 24,000 degrees Celsius (43,000 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s hotter than the surface of
the sun!

If a person could stand on the clouds at the top of Jupiter’s atmosphere, the force of gravity he or she
would feel would be about 2.4 times the force of gravity on the surface of Earth. A person who weighs
100 pounds on Earth would weigh about 240 pounds on Jupiter.

Jupiter has an extremely powerful magnetic field, like a giant magnet. Deep under Jupiter’s clouds is a
huge ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen. On Earth, hydrogen is usually gas. But on Jupiter, the pressure
is so great inside its atmosphere that the gas becomes liquid. As Jupiter spins, the swirling, liquid
metal ocean creates the strongest magnetic field in the solar system. At the tops of the clouds (tens of
thousands of kilometers above where the field is created), Jupiter’s magnetic field is 20 times
stronger than the magnetic field on Earth.

How Many Moons Does Jupiter Have?

Jupiter has 53 named moons. Scientists have discovered 14 more. But those 14 moons do not have
official names. Scientists now think Jupiter has a total of 67 moons. The most recent moons were
discovered in 2011. The planet’s four largest moons are Ganymede (GAN-i-meed), Callisto
(kuh-LIS-toe), Io (eye-OH), and Europa (yur-O-puh).
These four moons are called the Galilean satellites. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered these
moons in 1610.

The largest of Jupiter’s moons is Ganymede. It is the largest moon in the solar system. Ganymede is
larger than the planet Mercury and three-fourths the size of Mars. Ganymede is the only moon in the
solar system known to have its own magnetic field. Ganymede and Callisto have many craters and
appear to be made of ice and rocky material.

Io has many active volcanoes. The volcanoes produce gases containing sulfur. The yellow-orange
surface of Io is most likely made of sulfur from the volcanic eruptions. Europa is the smallest of the
Galilean satellites. Europa's surface is mostly water ice. Beneath the ice may be an ocean of water or
slushy ice. Europa is thought to have twice as much water as Earth.

REF:https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-jupiter-58.html

Astronomical and Physical Characteristics

Jupiter's orbit lies beyond the asteroidbelt at a mean distance of 483.6 million mi (778.3 million km)
from the sun; its period of revolution is 11.86 years. In order from the sun it is the first of the giant
outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—very large, massive planets of relatively low
density, having rapid rotation and a thick, opaque atmosphere. Jupiter has a diameter of 88,815 mi
(142,984 km), more than 11 times that of the earth. Its mass is 318 times that of the earth and about
2 1-2 times the mass of all other planets combined.

The atmosphere of Jupiter is composed mainly of hydrogen, helium, methane, and ammonia.
However, the concentration of nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, argon, xenon, and krypton—as measured by
an instrument package dropped by the space probe Galileo during its 1995 flyby of the planet—is
more than twice what was expected, raising questions about the accepted theory of Jupiter's
formation. The atmosphere appears to be divided into a number of light and dark bands parallel to its
equator and shows a range of complex features, including a storm called the Great Red Spot. Located
in the southern hemisphere and varying from c.15,600 to 25,000 mi (25,000 to 40,000 km) in one
direction and 7,500 to 10,000 mi (12,000 to 16,000 km) in the other, the storm rotates
counterclockwise and has been observed ever since 1664, when Robert Hooke first noted it. Also in
the southern hemisphere is the Little Red Spot, c.8,000 mi (13,000 km) across. It formed from three
white-colored storms that developed in the 1940s, merged in 1998–2000, and became clearly red by
2006. Analysis of the data obtained when massive pieces of the comet Shoemaker Levy 9 plunged into
Jupiter in 1994 has extended our knowledge of the Jovian atmosphere, and the space probe Juno
revealed a number of smaller storms, each roughly the size of the earth, clustered at the planet's
poles.

Jupiter has no solid rock surface. One theory pictures a gradual transition from the outer ammonia
clouds to a thick layer of frozen gases and finally to a liquid or solid hydrogen mantle. Beneath its has
been suggested that Jupiter may have a core of rocky material with a mass 10–15 times that of the
earth. The spot and other markings of the atmosphere also provide evidence for Jupiter's rapid
rotation, which has a period of about 9 hr 55 min. This rotation causes a polar flattening of over 6%.
The temperature ranges from about −190°F; (−124°C;) for the visible surface of the atmosphere, to
9°F; (−13°C;) at lower cloud levels; localized regions reach as high as 40°F; (4°C;) at still lower cloud
levels near the equator. Jupiter radiates about four times as much heat energy as it receives from the
sun, suggesting an internal heat source. This energy is thought to be due in part to a slow contraction
of the planet. Jupiter is also characterized by intense nonthermal radio emission; in the 15-m range it
is the strongest radio source in the sky. Jupiter has a huge asymetrical magnetic field, extending past
the orbit of Saturn in one direction but far less in the direction of the sun. This magnetosphere traps
high levels of energetic particles far more intense than those found within earth's Van Allen radiation
belts. Nine space probes have encountered the Jovian system: Pioneers 10 and 11 (1973 and 1974),
Voyagers 1 and 2 (both 1979), Ulysses (1992, 2004), Galileo (1995–2003), Cassini (2000), New
Horizons (2007), and Juno (2016–).

REF:https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Physical+characteristics+of+Jupiter

STUCTURE

The composition of Jupiter is similar to that of the Sun—mostly hydrogen and helium. Deep in the
atmosphere, pressure and temperature increase, compressing the hydrogen gas into a liquid. This
gives Jupiter the largest ocean in the solar system—an ocean made of hydrogen instead of water.
Scientists think that, at depths perhaps halfway to the planet's center, the pressure becomes so great
that electrons are squeezed off the hydrogen atoms, making the liquid electrically conducting like
metal. Jupiter's fast rotation is thought to drive electrical currents in this region, generating the
planet's powerful magnetic field. It is still unclear if, deeper down, Jupiter has a central core of solid
material or if it may be a thick, super-hot and dense soup. It could be up to 90,032 degrees Fahrenheit
(50,000 degrees Celsius) down there, made mostly of iron and silicate minerals (similar to quartz).

REF:https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/jupiter/in-depth/