Jupiter- Solar system's vacuum cleaner

     The fifth planet from the sun, Jupiter is known since early 17th century and is always a very fascinating object is the night sky for most of the year. In 1610 when Galileo first pointed a telescope at the sky he discovered Jupiter's four large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (now known as the Galilean moons) and recorded their motions back and forth around Jupiter. This was the first discovery of a center of motion not apparently centered on the Earth. It was a major point in favor of Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the motions of the planets (along with other new evidence from his telescope: the phases of Venus and the mountains on the Moon).

                Do you know?
Few Jupiter things:-
1)Biggest planet of our solar system
2)Planet with more number of moons
3)Planet with huge magnetosphere
4)Most massive planet of our solar system  
5)The only planet that has a center of mass
    with the Sun that lies outside the volume of
    the Sun
6)Fastest rotating planet in the entire solar
    system
7)Jupiter also got immense gravitational field
    of all other planets





     Jupiter has rings like Saturn's, but much fainter and smaller, unlike Saturn's, Jupiter's rings are dark (albedo about .05). They're probably composed of very small grains of rocky material. There are mainly three rings, unlike Saturn's rings, they seem to contain no ice, and they are named Gossamer, Main and Halo.

          True image of Jupiter.


               Do you know?
Under Jupiter's atmosphere is a large liquid ocean of hydrogen and water. What lies in between that ocean and the atmosphere? Actually, there is no in between. The atmosphere slowly gets thicker and thicker until it becomes part of the ocean.







     Jupiter is the fastest rotating planet in our solar system with a rotational period almost equal to 10 hours. Therefore a day on Jupiter (if you can manage to stay on its surface) is just 9 hours 54 minutes. Due to this fast rotation the planet gets bulged at its equator and the region near the poles become flat. This massive planet is 5.2AU away from sun, hence it got a revolution period (time to orbit around Sun) is approximately 12 years, that is, 11.84 years or 11 years, 306 days, 19 hours. This makes Jupiter and Earth almost look like the hour's hand and minute's hand respectively of a clock, for every ~12 revolutions of Earth around sun, Jupiter completes its one revolution, just like a minute's hand making its 12 revolutions to complete get back the hour's hand back to its initial position.

    Jupiter is a very stormy planet. There are storms found throughout the atmosphere, and most of the storms seem to never end. The many different cloud formations and storms in the atmosphere also make Jupiter a very colorful planet.

     Jupiter has been called the Solar System's vacuum cleaner, because of its immense gravity well and location near the inner Solar System. It receives the most frequent comet impacts of the Solar System's planets.

            Do you know?
Jupiter's great red spot, visible in the picture, is where a giant storm has been raging for at least 300 years. This red spot is also called "The Eye of Jupiter" because of its shape. This storm's super hurricane winds blow across an area larger than the Earth.












 Few other characteristics of Jupiter:

Escape velocity                   : 59.5 km/s
Equatorial rotation velocity : 12.6 km/s
Surface pressure                 : 20-200 kPa
Equatorial radius                 : 71,492 km
Axial tilt                                  : 3.13°
Gravitational acceleration
on surface                             : 24.79 m/s²