Jupiter

This is the biggest planet in our solar system; its group is double that of the other planets mutual. Because of this Jupiter cause visible change in their peers in the solar system particularly on Mars, Saturn and largely asteroids and comets.

The destruction of the planet is about 1/16 (so-called dynamic flattening) it is connected to the high speed of revolution. The Jovian revolution period is the straight in the entire solar system and although not all parts turn at the same average speed is 10 hours. In 1961 there was a variation on this for more than a second.

Aurora on Jupiter

At the core of Jupiter, more than one and half times the size of Earth and ten to thirty times more mass boils at temperatures around 30,000 ° C due to a pressure of one hundred million Earth atmospheres. Around the core is a layer of liquid metal hydrogen of about 40,000 kilometers thick. At temperatures of 10,000 and 30,000 degrees Celsius and pressures in excess of three million atmospheres like Earth, hydrogen becomes highly conductive.

Under is a coating of about 20,000 kilometers thick composed of molecular hydrogen and helium? As the pressure drop to the range of a few tens of atmospheres like ours and the temperature reaches 40 º C compounds move from liquid to gas.

A cloud cover of less than 150 km. thick surrounds Jupiter in structured shades of orange and brown. In the highest clouds reach the temperatures -150 ° C and a pressure of two tenths of an atmosphere. Reactions triggered by the sun's ultraviolet rays help produce a chemical cloud that lies at the top of the outer atmosphere of Jupiter. Below the cloud, convection currents circulate heat from the inside.

Jupiter radiate 1.7 times more energy than it receives from the sun before it was thought to be due to a slow contraction of the planet but today is taken as more likely that the internal source is the heat remaining when this body was formed in the solar nebula.

Contain a large amount of hydrogen in the upper atmosphere (82%), 17% is helium and only one per cent is other elements. The gas heated by the intense heat the planet up into the high atmosphere and cooled into clouds of ammonia crystals that float in the outermost shell of Jovian. Areas are brighter, cooler and higher than the surrounding gases. The wind speed is 150 meters per second.

The long-lived Great Red Spot has been under observation since the seventeenth century. Forming a hole in the belt attachment is now known that a cyclonic storm, a weather phenomenon on the planet. The color is probably caused by phosphorus is affected by sunlight; it seems smaller than it was a century ago and probably does not involve a permanent structure. The Great Red Spot varies in length but changes very little latitude.

Image of the Great Red Spot of Jupiter

Jupiter's rings were an unexpected discovery of the Voyager, are dark in contrast to Saturn's spectacular rings, invisible from Earth. Strongly influenced by the inner satellites (also discovered in the '80s by the same ships) appear to consist of several components and particles can extend almost to the limit of the planet's clouds. May be it consisting of dust and rocks.

Atmosphere of Jupiter

In 1994 this planet because of its immense gravitational pull, caused fragmentation of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into 21 fragments, which struck about one every 6 hours (these impacts formed more energy than the combined strength of all nuclear weapons there on earth). This very special property has protected our planet from possible collisions but this does not mean that we can play a dirty trick by diverting other potential bodies to the ground.

Data:

142,800 km diameter

Diam / 11.3 Earth

Ground / Shield 318

1.31 Density

Gravity / Land 2.54

Ecuador inclination to the plane of the orbit of the planet 3 °

sidereal rotation period in days, hours, minutes and seconds 9 hours, 55 minutes, 30 second

distance to the sun in millions of low Km: 741 / Maximum: 815 / Media: 778

Distance to the sun at 5.2 AU

Inclination of the plane of the planet's orbit with respect to land 1 º 19 '

sidereal revolution period in years, Days and Hours 11 Years / 314 Days / 20 Hours

Number of satellites (the most important) 16