2. Jupiter pictures
Jupiter's aurora is a very powerful source of energy.
It produces much more power (about a million
MegaWatts Scientists are still studying Jupiter's
aurora to understand it completely. The streams
of particles responsible for the aurora are
thought to create radio noises called "DAM". On
Earth, it is "Hiss" which is thought to occur when
particles are being forced to enter the auroral
zone. Jupiter's magnetosphere is far different
from the Earth's, so scientists studying the aurora
of Jupite
3. Jupiter: Moons
• he planet Jupiter's four largest moons are
called the Galilean satellites, after Italian
astronomer Galileo Galilei, who observed
them in 1610. The German astronomer Simon
Marius claimed to have seen the moons
around the same time, but he did not publish
his observations and so Galileo is given the
credit for their discovery
4. Jupiters great red spot
• The Great Red Spot is a persistent anticyclonic storm on the planet Jupiter,
22 degrees south of the equator, which has lasted at least 340 years.
• See also:
• Jupiter
• Space Telescopes
• Northern Lights
• Space Exploration
• Sun
• Extrasolar Planets
• The storm is large enough to be visible through Earth-based telescopes.
• It was probably first observed by Cassini, who described it around 1665.
• The oval object rotates counterclockwise, with a period of about 6 days.
• The Great Red Spot's dimensions are 24–40,000 km × 12–14,0
5. Jupiters rings
• Jupiter's faint ring system is shown in this color composite, viewed by Voyager 2, as
two light orange lines protruding from the left toward Jupiter's limb.
• Jupiter's ring was discovered by Voyager 1 in a single image that was targeted
specifically to search for a faint ring system. Subsequently, Voyager 2 was
reprogrammed to take a more complete set of images. The ring is now known to
be composed of three major components. The "Main" ring is about 7,000 km wide
and has an abrupt outer boundary 129,130 km from the center of the planet. The
main ring encompasses the orbits of two small moons, Adrastea and Metis, which
may act as the source for the dust that makes up most of the ring. At its inner edge
the main ring merges gradually into the "Halo." The halo is a broad, faint torus of
material about 20,000 km thick and extending halfway from the main ring down to
the planet's cloudtops.
• Just outside the main ring is the broad and exceedingly faint "Gossamer" ring,
which extends out beyond the orbit of the moon Amalthea. It is probably
composed of dust particles less than 10 microns in diameter -- about the size of
cigarette smoke particles. It extends to an outer edge of about 129,000 km (80,161
miles) from the center of the planet and inward to about 30,000 km (18,642
miles). The origin of the ring is probably from micrometeorite bombardment of the
tiny moons orbiting within the ring.
6. Jupiters graviti
• Jupiter does not have a solid surface upon which to stand - just many turbulent and increasingly
dense layers of gas and liquid - though it may have a very dense, solid core.
However, if you were to stand where the gassy layers give way to liquid (its approximate surface),
gravity would be about 25m/s2. That's over two and a half times the gravity on the surface of Earth.
If you weighed 100lbs on Earth (where gravity is 9.8 m/s2), you would weigh about 254lbs on
Jupiter, or be around 254% as heavy (or 154% heavier).
This is because, though Jupiter is 318 times the mass of the Earth, it is 11 times greater in diameter.
Gravity increases with mass, but decreases with the distance from the centre of mass. The
gravitational force is g=m/r2 (gravitational constant x mass of Jupiter x mass of the object, all
divided by the distance between the centres of mass squared).
If you could compress the mass of Jupiter down to the size of Earth and attempt to land upon its
surface, you would be crushed into oblivion - your weight would be more than 300 times as great
as on Earth!
The same thing it is on Earth or anywhere else in the universe . . . the characteristic
of space-time that causes forces of attraction between every two masses.
7. Jupiter's mass
• The mass of Jupiter is 1.9 x 1027 kg. It is hard to fully understand a number
that large, so here are a few comparisons to help. It would take 318 times
Earth’s mass to equal Jupiter’s. Jupiter is 2.5 times more massive than all
of the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is actually so
massive that if it gained much more mass it would shrink.
• How can additional mass cause a planet to shrink? Gravitational
compression. Given that there is no more hydrogen or helium gas floating
around for Jupiter to collect, it would gain mass through the accretion of
rocky bodies like asteroids. Jupiter’s intense gravity would pull additional
rock tightly together shrinking the diameter of the planet and increasing
its density. As the density increased so would the gravity, further
compressing the planet. Scientists estimate that Jupiter would have to
accumulate 3-4 times its current mass in order to begin compressing.
Since there isn’t that much material in our Solar System, it is a pretty good
bet that Jupiter will never shrink.
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