Facts about Jupiter
posted in Amazing Facts, Latest News |
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest. Jupiter is more than twice as immense as all the other planets combined. And that is approximately 318 times of the Earth. Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the sky after the Sun, the Moon and Venus at some times Mars is also brighter. Galileo’s discovery, in 1610, of Jupiter’s four large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto was the first discovery of a center of movement not actually centered on the Earth.
Facts
• Jupiter has a fluid metal ocean at its centre, surrounded by thousands of kilometers of hydrogen and helium gas.
• Its famous Red Spot is in reality a great storm that has raged for at least four hundred years.
• Jupiter has a thin set of rings, which is barely visible from Earth.
• This planet is considered as the vacuum cleaner of the Solar System because it sucks in comets, asteroids and meteorites which could be on a collision course for Earth.
• Jupiter takes only 9 hours and 55 minutes to spin on its axis. This means a day on Jupiter is less than 10 hours long. Its fast rotary motion causes the planet to be compressed, being wider at the equator than from North to South.
• Jupiter is the planet with the strongest pull of gravity in the Solar System.
• The only other object in the Solar System with a stronger pull of gravity is the Sun.
• Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, is the biggest moon in the Solar System.
• Jupiter’s gravity is used to catapult space-craft on deep space missions further away. This is how the Voyager missions of 1975 managed to succeed.