Jupiter Facts

Jupiter's mass (1.9 x 1027 kg ) is 318 times the mass of the Earth, and is 2.5 times the mass of the all the other planets in the solar system.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun.

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and is so large that approximately 1300 Earths can fit in it.

Jupiter is named after the supreme God in Roman Mythology.  Jupiter happened to be the Roman name of the supreme Greek God Zeus. Since Jupiter appeared big and bright in the sky, they named it after their God. Interestingly, most of the moons of Jupiter are named after the daughters of Jupiter.

Jupiter orbits the Sun slowly, making the trip once every 12 years.

Jupiter rotates very fast with a “day” taking 10 Earth hours.

Jupiter is not a terrestrial planet like Earth, Mars, Venus or Mercury.

Jupiter, called the gaseous giant is a gas planet unlike Earth and Mars which are rocky. What does this mean? It means that Jupiter lacks solid surfaces and is gaseous in composition. It's a humongous gas cloud comprising of gases like Hydrogen, Helium (90% Hydrogen, 10% Helium) and few traces of methane, water, ammonia and rock dust. These gases get converted by the immense pressure to liquid as they go deeper into the planet. The core of Jupiter consists of a molten metal, metallic hydrogen and rock materials. It happens to be bigger than our planet Earth and is about three times hotter than the Earth's core.

Jupiter is essentially a sun, but without the nuclear reaction at its core required to produce light.

The atmosphere of Jupiter consists of raging wind patters running horizontally across the planet.

The giant red spot on Jupiter is a storm that has been raging for over 300 years.

The red spot storm is now believed to eat other storms to obtain energy to continue raging.

Jupiter is like a miniature solar system within itself. The first four moons of Jupiter were spotted by Galileo and thus are called Galilean satellites. When Galileo made this discovery, he realized that not everything revolves around the Earth in the existing universe. The four moons are named: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto after the Greek Gods and are the largest of Jupiter's moons. So far, 63 moons have been discovered, most of which have been discovered after 1979.

Much like the Sun holds the planets, Jupiter captured most of its moons with its massive gravity pull.

Jupiter contains 71 percent of all of the planetary mass in our solar system.

Jupiter’s has rings that consist of dust and meteoroids.

Jupiter’s rings are roughly 140,000 kilometers wide.

Jupiter was believed to have three rings, but actually has four.

The visible rings of Jupiter are known as Gossamer, Halo and the inner ring.

The new ring is closer to the planet, not visible from Earth and rotates the opposite direction of the other rings. It was discovered by the Galileo probe.

Jupiter’s mass is roughly 320 times that of the Earth.