Jupiter is awesome
... and clearly, you should learn about it.


Jupiter is a pretty cool planet; 
(- 145 degrees Celsius or -234 degrees Fahrenheit to be exact)
It's the 5th planet from our Sun and the largest in our solar system. If you were to combine the mass of all the other planets in our solar system, Jupiter's mass would still be 2.5 times greater. It has 317.8 times more mass than the Earth, but only 1/4 of Earth's density.

 Its composed of gas and liquid matter,the entire atmosphere is about 75% hydrogen and 24% helium with 1% left over of other elements by mass and its atmosphere is the largest in the solar system, reaching over 5,000 km in altitude.


Jupiter's clouds are only 50 km thick, they are made up of ammonia crystals, beyond that you're looking at just a lot of hydrogen and helium.

Inside of Jupiter it is thought that it has a dense rocky core with a layer of liquid metallic hydrogen, but it has no surface.. because at it's inner core it has 10 times the surface pressure of Earth. The metallic hydrogen inside Jupiter is thought to be the reason why it has a magnetic field 14 times stronger than Earth.



 It is thought to have formed like the other planets from the solar nebula ( the ring of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun.) The reason why in the inner solar system we have rocky planets and further out we have gas giants is because any closer to the sun and it would be too warm for icy materials to remain solid.. which would be why the outer planets are so huge! This line separating these planets is called the frost line and it's right between Mars and Jupiter. 


The Giant Red Spot is a 350 + year long storm that's been brewing and it's about the size of two Earths in diameter, but it's shrinking... who knows.. one day it may actually disappear.

But here's a few things you didn't know;

Jupiter has three rings! (Gossamer, Main, and Halo)They are extremely thin and not very visible like Saturn's because Saturn's rings are ice which reflect light a lot more.

It has 67 moons! (or "natural satellites")
The four largest were discovered by Galileo ( Europa, Io, Ganymede, and Callisto)

If you went to Jupiter (don't..because you can't) you'd weigh more than twice as much because of it's tremendous gravitational pull.

Why should you be thankful for Jupiter?

Jupiter's strong gravitational pull causes a lot of asteroids that might have hit Earth, to hit Jupiter instead, thanks Jupiter!

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