Planet Jupiter ( Pengetahuan Am )

VITAL STATISTICS

Average distance from the Sun: About 778,000,000 km
Diameter: 88.650 miles = 142,984 km
Mass: About 1,899,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg
Temperature: -166 C at cloud tops
Number of moons: 16
Any rings? Yes, but they're really faint, which is why you usually don't see them drawn in pictures
Length of a year: 11.86 of our years
Length of a day: Only 9 hrs, 50 min, 28 sec!!!

WHAT'S IT MADE OF?

Jupiter is one of the Gas Giants. When you see pictures of it - like the one we have on this page - you're really looking at a thick layer of hydrogen and helium clouds that completely cover the planet. If we would really want to try to see Jupiter's surface, we'd have to send something through all those clouds which are a few thousand kilometers deep. Jupiter, itself, is made up of liquid hydrogen (see the next question) on the "surface." Below this is liquid metallic hydrogen. There's none of this on the earth! The center is chewy caramel - just kidding! The center is a big chunk of ice and rock.

CAN I LIVE THERE?

Well, first of all, there's no surface to stand on... You'd just have to swim around in an ocean of liquid hydrogen. But the gravity on Jupiter is so strong that you'd sink anyway. There's no oxygen to breathe or water to drink. So, the answer is NO!

HOW FAST A ROCKET HAVE TO GO TO GET OF THIS THING?

To escape Jupiter's gravity and get out into space, a rocket has to travel at a speed of 134,118 mph or 60 km/sec. That's about 2063 times faster than your parents are allowed to drive on a highway!

THE MOON'S.

There are the Galilean moons (discovered by Galileo): Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

The others are: Metis, Adrastea, Amalthea, Thebe, Leda, Himalia, Lysithea, Elara, Ananke, Carme, Pasiphae and Sinope.

In 1979, one of our flying robot explorers, Voyager, took a picture of an ACTIVE volcano on Io! The lava was shooting HUNDREDS OF MILES into space.

Europa has a surface made of ice and scientists think there is an ocean underneath! This is the most likely place in our solar system (other than Earth) for life to exist. There are plans for us to have swimming robots explore this ocean. What a great sci-fi movie this would make!

THE GRAND MOON'S OF JUPITER. Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.



OTHER COOL INFO.

Jupiter is really huge! It's the largest planet in our solar system. In fact, over 1300 Earths could fit inside Jupiter! Now, that's big!

Go back up and look how long a day on Jupiter is. This is how long it takes to make one full spin (like a 360 on your skateboard). How long? ONLY ABOUT 10 HOURS?! That's the shortest day of any of our planets. So... Jupiter is the biggest and spins the fastest. That's COOL! With all that liquid metal spinning around really fast, Jupiter is a really big magnet.

The hottest temperatures in our solar system (yes, even hotter than the Sun) occur in Jupiter's magnetosphere. This is kind of like a big hallo that the magnetic field makes around a planet. The temperatures here can be a high as 300-400 million K. The center of the Sun (remember this is the hottest part) is only 15 million K. Not only is Jupiter's magnetosphere the hottest thing in our solar system, it's the biggest too! It goes out past Saturn and you'd even be able to fit the Sun inside of it.

Did you notice that Jupiter is made up of the same stuff as the Sun? So, is Jupiter hot like the Sun? It's magnetosphere sure is hot... But Jupiter, itself, is not hot. The reason is that it just isn't big enough. For the Sun, we told you that the Sun's heat came from all the hydrogen atoms banging into each other. Because Jupiter is a LOT smaller than the Sun, it just doesn't have a strong enough gravity to get the hydrogen atoms running around enough.

We didn't used to think that Jupiter had rings. No one here had ever been able to see any. That is, until 1979 (that's only a couple years after Star Wars came out), when Voyager took some pictures of Jupiter close up. It found rings! They are a LOT smaller that Saturn's rings. (We left them off our drawing.)

Did you see the big red spot that we have in our picture of Jupiter? Well, it's called the Great Red Spot. (Good name, huh?) It's a big storm that's been going on for about 300 years! It varies in size and it's sometimes as wide as three Earths!