Overview of Jupiter

Jupiter or Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest planet in the Solar System. It is a giant gas planet with a mass of one-thousandth of the Sun but two and a half times the total mass of all the other planets in the Solar System combined.

Jupiter is classified as a giant gas planet along with Saturn (Uranus and Neptune is classified into giant ice planet).

Jupiter contains mainly hydrogen and helium - accounting for a quarter of its mass, although helium accounts for only a tenth of the number of molecules.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System.

The structure of Jupiter

Jupiter mainly contains material in the state of gas and liquid. It is the largest giant planetary planet in the solar system with a diameter of 142,984 km at the equator. The average density of the planet is 1,326 g / cm3, and has the largest density of the four giant gas planets. However, this density is smaller than any density of rocky planets.

In Jupiter's upper layer, it contains about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium in percentage or volume of gas molecules. Since helium atoms are four times the mass of a hydrogen atom, this component changes when described according to the mass ratio distributed according to different elements. Therefore, the planetary atmosphere contains approximately 75% of hydrogen and 24% of helium by mass, with about 1% remaining of other elements.

The mass of Jupiter is about 2.5 times the total mass of all the other planets in the Solar System.

The atmosphere of Jupiter

Jupiter also has the largest atmosphere in the Solar System, extending over 5000 km in altitude. Because Jupiter does not have a solid surface, the bottom of the atmosphere is considered to have an atmospheric pressure of 10 bar, 10 times the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the Earth.

Clouds on Jupiter

Jupiter is permanently covered with clouds containing ammonia crystals and may be amonium hydrogen sulfite.

Large red stain on Jupiter

The most famous feature of Jupiter is probably the Great Red Stain, a storm that turns in the direction of Jupiter's rotation and the diameter is often larger than Earth, located at the southern latitude 22 ° below the equator. It has existed since at least 1831, and probably from 1665.

Photograph of the Great Red Spot and the surrounding areas taken by the Voyager 1 on February 25, 1979, when the ship was 9.2 million km from the planet.

Jupiter belt

Jupiter has a fuzzy planetary belt system consisting of three main rings: the inner ring or the halo, the main belt is relatively bright, and the outer ring is thin. The physical composition of these rings is mainly dust, not ice as Saturn's belt.

Jupiter's magnetic field

Jupiter's magnetic field is 14 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field and it is also the largest magnetic field in the Solar System.

Jupiter's orbit

Jupiter is the only planet centered on the Sun outside the Sun's volume, although less than 7% of the Sun's radius. The average distance between Jupiter and the Sun is 778 million kilometers (5.2 times the distance from Earth to the Sun, or 5.2 AU) and it completes an orbit of 11.86 years on Earth .

Satellites of Jupiter

As of July 2018, Jupiter has 79 natural satellites. Of these, 63 satellites have a diameter less than 10 kilometers and were only discovered since 1975. The four largest satellites, called "Galilei" satellites are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Exploring Jupiter

Since 1973 a number of automatic spacecraft have come close to Jupiter, prominently the Pioneer 10 probe, the first ship close enough to the planet and sent to photographs as well as the largest planetary information in Solar system.

In 2000, Cassini, on a journey to Saturn, flew over Jupiter and sent some of the best resolution photos to the planet ever. On December 19, 2000, the vessel took Himalayan satellite imagery, but the resolution was too low for scientists to realize the details of this satellite surface.

So far only the Galileo is a ship orbiting Jupiter, when it orbits around the planet on December 7, 1995. It has been exploring for more than seven years, flying several times to Galilei satellites and defense. Amalthea.

NASA currently has a flight to Jupiter to study the details of polar regions as well as the planet's atmosphere. The Juno launched from August 2011, and went into the orbit of Jupiter in late 2016. In the future, the planned mission was approved to study the Jupiter system headed by the ESA agency. Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE), with the intended time to launch in 2022 and to Jupiter around 2030, studying four Galileo satellites and especially Europa.