Facts about Jupiter
The flyby was planned come within about 32 Jovian radii (3 Gm) of Jupiter and would be the center of a 4-month intensive observation campaign.
Jupiter is usually the fourth brightest object in the sky, after the Sun, the Moon, and Venus.
Energetic protons were found and measured in the Jovian radiation belt and electric currents were detected flowing between Jupiter and some of its moons, particularly Io.
Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest planetary structure in the solar system.
Before the Voyager missions, astronomers were uncertain of the nature of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
Metis orbits within its fluid Roche limit with Jupiter, and objects not rigidly attached to it may freely fall away from it and into Jupiter's gravitational field.
In 2000, the Cassini probe, en route to Saturn, flew by Jupiter and provided some of the highest-resolution images ever taken of the planet.
During the period July 16 to 22, 1994, over twenty fragments from the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter's southern hemisphere, providing the first direct observation of a collision between two solar system objects.
The Romans named the planet after the Roman god Jupiter (also called Jove).
The magnetic field is generated by eddy currents (caused by a moving magnetic field intersecting a conductor) in Jupiter's metallic hydrogen core.
The Great Red Spot is a persistent anticyclonic storm on the planet Jupiter, 22° south of the equator, which has lasted at least 340 years.
Finally, there is a distant and very faint outer ring circling Jupiter backwards—retrograde of its spin.
Quite naturally, Jupiter's gravitational influence probably played a large role in the evolution of the Solar System.
In 1892, E. E. Barnard observed a fifth satellite of Jupiter with the 36-inch refractor at Lick Observatory in California.
The spacecraft also witnessed the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into Jupiter as it approached the planet in 1994, giving a unique vantage point for this spectacular event.
New Horizons passed lunar orbit before midnight EST on the same day, and was scheduled to reach Jupiter in February 2007.
The tidal force from Jupiter, on the other hand, works to circularize their orbits.
In 1610, Galileo Galilei discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (now known as the Galilean moons) using a telescope, the first observation of moons other than Earth's.
Jupiter's best-known feature is the Great Red Spot, a storm larger than the Earth's size.
Jupiter is thought to have about as large a diameter as a planet of its composition can; adding extra mass would cause the planet to shrink due to increased gravitational compression.
The only spacecraft to have descended into Jupiter's atmosphere to take scientific measurements is the Galileo probe.
The planet Jupiter has been known since ancient times and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky.
On that basis, one might argue that Saturn must have formerly been larger than Jupiter.
To give a sense of Jupiter's scale, the white oval storm directly below the Great Red Spot is approximately the same diameter as Earth.
Jupiter is composed of a relatively small rocky core, surrounded by metallic hydrogen, with further layers of liquid hydrogen and gaseous hydrogen.
Reaching Jupiter from Earth requires a delta-v of 9.2 km/s, which is comparable to the 9.7 km/s delta-v needed to reach low Earth orbit.
Jupiter has a faint planetary ring system composed of smoke-like dust particles knocked from its moons by energetic meteor impacts.
The Voyagers vastly improved the understanding of the Galilean moons and discovered Jupiter's rings.
Jupiter and the other gas giants—Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—are sometimes referred to as "Jovian planets."
Pioneer 10 obtained the first ever close up images of Jupiter and the Galilean moons, studied its atmosphere, detected its magnetic field, observed its radiation belts and found that Jupiter is mainly liquid.
Jupiter also has white ovals and brown ovals, which are lesser unnamed storms.
Most planetary orbits lie closer to Jupiter's orbital plane than the Sun's equatorial plane.
Fortunately, gravity assists through planetary flybys can be used to reduce the energy required to reach Jupiter, albeit at the cost of a significantly longer flight duration.
The JIMO (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter) was expected to be launched sometime after 2012.
When they were younger and hotter, Jupiter and the other gas giant planets were much larger than they are today.
During this pass the probe conducted studies on Jupiter's magnetosphere.
Jupiter has been called the Solar System's vacuum cleaner, due to its immense gravity well.
So far, the only spacecraft to orbit Jupiter is the Galileo orbiter, which went into orbit around Jupiter on December 7, 1995.
The rotation rate of stars can be approximated through spectroscopic measurement, or more exactly determined by tracking the rotation rate of starspots.
Shoemaker-Levy 9 split into smaller pieces due to Jupiter's tidal force before the impact.
Jupiter is perpetually covered with a layer of clouds, composed of ammonia crystals and possibly ammonium hydrosulfide.
Before the discoveries of the Voyager missions, Jupiter's moons were arranged neatly into four groups of four.
Pioneer 10 flew past Jupiter in December of 1973, followed by Pioneer 11 exactly one year later.
Jupiter and its moons form a system resembling the Solar System.
Jupiter's upper atmosphere undergoes differential rotation, an effect first noticed by Giovanni Cassini in 1690.
The Pioneer probes confirmed that Jupiter's enormous magnetic field is 10 times stronger than Earth's and contains 20,000 times as much energy.
Jupiter's atmosphere is composed of ~90 percent hydrogen/~10 percent helium by number of atoms and ~75 percent hydrogen/~24 percent helium by mass, with ~1 percent of the mass accounted for by other substances.
Most planetary orbits lie closer to Jupiter's orbital plane than the Sun's equatorial plane.
To give a sense of Jupiter's scale, the white oval storm directly below the Great Red Spot is approximately the same diameter as Earth.
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.
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!
It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants; the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity.
The Romans knew of seven bright objects in the sky: the Sun, the Moon and the five brightest planets. They named them after their most important gods. Jupiter, the largest planet, was named after the king of the Roman gods.
Jupiter Facts. The planet Jupiter is the fifth planet out from the Sun, and is two and a half times more massive than all the other planets in the solar system combined. It is made primarily of gases and is therefore known as a “gas giant”.
From Latin Iuppiter, which was ultimately derived from the Indo-European *Dyeu-pater, composed of the elements Dyeus (see ZEUS) and pater "father". Jupiter was the supreme god in Roman mythology.
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Fittingly, it was named after the king of the gods in Roman mythology. In a similar manner, the ancient Greeks named the planet after Zeus, the king of the Greek pantheon.Sep 18, 2017
Jupiter - King of the Gods - Crystalinks. Jupiter is the supreme god of the Roman pantheon, called dies pater, "shining father". He is a god of light and sky, and protector of the state and its laws. He is a son of Saturn and brother of Neptune and Juno (who is also his wife).
Jupiter (Latin: Iuppiter) is the king of the gods in Roman mythology. He was the god of the sky and thunder. He is known as Zeus in Greek mythology. His brother's name was Pluto and his sister was Ceres.
The Romans regarded Jupiter as the equivalent of the Greek Zeus, and in Latin literature and Roman art, the myths and iconography of Zeus are adapted under the name Iuppiter. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Jupiter was the brother of Neptune and Pluto, the Roman equivalents of Poseidon and Hades respectively.