Do you want to know which is the largest planet in our solar system? dowhat is jupiter? Well, it's about the planet Jupiter and it has very particular characteristics, such as its formation and composition, so we invite you to read this article to complete your knowledge about this giant planet.
Jupiter Composition
The huge Jupiter is a planet of gaseous formation, which turns out to be a combination of hydrogen in a saturation of 93% and helium in a saturation of 7%. It is composed of gases and constitutes 71% of the total mass of the rest of the planets in the solar system, the planet Jupiter represents its entire mass.
Jupiter is the planet that is in the fifth position with respect to the Sun, since it is preceded by Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, in that order. It received that name in honor of the god of Roman mythology Jupiter. It is possible to observe it with the naked eye in the night skies, because it is the fourth brightest celestial body, ahead of the Sun, the Moon and the planet Venus.
But the brightness ratio between the planet Venus and the planet Jupiter It varies, depending on the month of the year in which we find ourselves. For example, in the month of March, Venus shines more clearly than Jupiter, but in other months the reverse is true.
Jupiter characteristics
As with the other planets of gaseous composition, its winds are almost 600 kilometers per hour, passing through the surface strata of the planet. Jupiter has a well-known Great Red Spot, which is regularly observed by astronomy enthusiasts and is a pressure area of its atmosphere with beautiful and unique features.
It has been determined that the planet Jupiter it radiates a greater amount of energy into space than is absorbed by the Sun. One outstanding aspect of Jupiter and for which we should be very grateful is that due to its location it has acted as a defensive line for life on planet Earth. If Jupiter wasn't in that Orbit and location, our planet would be 1000 times more threatened by asteroid strikes.
The shower of asteroids and meteorites in our sector of the universe is cyclical and occurs around every 60.000 years, and for life to have taken hold on Earth, Jupiter has played a fundamental role.
The existence of this giant planet in our solar system has been essential, because its great mass causes a pulling power that attracts the largest objects that constitute threats of mass destruction.
Jupiter satellites
Do you want to know how many are the Jupiter satellites? Well, there are many, to begin with, we can tell you that this planet is surrounded by more than 60 moons. The first satellites of Jupiter were discovered in the year 1610. Galileo Galilei was able to discover with a rudimentary telescope the four largest moons of the Jovian system which are: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
Later and due to the sending of space explorers, we have been able to observe a more concise picture of the number of Jovian moons. On a voyage of the Voyager probe in 1979, Metis, Adrastea and Thebe were discovered. But prior to spatial development, various scholars of the heavens had already discovered Amalthea (1892), Himalia (1904), Elara (1905), Pasifae (1908), Sinope (1914), Lysithea and Carmi (1938), Ananké ( 1951), Leda (1974), Themisto (1975), Callírroe (1999).
In the year 2000, ten new satellites were added to the Jovian system, which raised the number of Jupiter's moons to 28. In the year 2001, eleven new moons joined the ranks of its satellites. Then in 2003, 23 more satellites were discovered, until in 2006 the list reached the number of 63 known Jovian moons, but the largest number of them has a diameter of 9 kilometers.
When the space explorer New Horizons was able to approach and fly over the planet Jupiter in 2007, we were able to observe its atmosphere, being able to identify bands of clouds that alternate in a diffuse way and it was possible to verify that the giant suffers storms that are characterized by enormous eddies that take the shape of an oval.
We have said that Jupiter is a giant planet that has served the Earth as a bulletproof shield, and this is so because a planet is a body in the universe that orbits around a star, in the case of our solar system, the Sun. , whose mass possesses the necessary gravity to attract other celestial bodies and remove them from its path. That is why Jupiter has absorbed many of the masses that have threatened our planet.
Jupiter and its Measurements
It has been established that the diameter of Jupiter is almost 11,2 times that of the Earth and that this planet makes a rotation movement of 9 h 55 min 27,3, which constitutes the length of a day on Jupiter. , due to its size,one has to conclude that it is moving at a great speed.
Let's look at other measurements of Jupiter:
- Aphelion (106 km): 816.62
- Perihelion (106 km): 740.52
- Eccentricity: 0.048775
- Synodic Period (days): 398.88
- Average orbital speed (km/s): 13.07
- Inclination towards the ecliptic: 1.30530°
- Axial Angle: 3.13°
- Average diameter: 139 km
- Volume (km3): 1.43128×1015
- Mass (kg): 1.8986 x 1027, which is 317,8 times that of Earth
- Gravity (m/s2): 24.7964249
- Escape Velocity (km/s): 59.5
- Equatorial Diameter (km): 142
- Polar diameter (km): 133 708
- Albedo: 0,52
- Number of satellites: 79 at the moment
- Surface temperature: -121°C (152 K)
- Sidereal rotation period: 9 h 55 m 27.3 s
- Composition: approximately hydrogen: 89% helium: 10%
structure of jupiter
It has not been possible to establish with certainty what the structure of the planet Jupiter, But it has been concluded that the huge planets were the product of an accumulation of hydrogen and helium gases around a center that is composed of rocks and ice.
Jupiter has a mass about 318 times that of Earth, it is speculated that it has a core of rocks, which is an agglomeration of iron and silicates that have the dimensions of Earth and is thought to have about 10 times the mass of the Earth. Its center of rocks can be found flooded with hydrogen and liquid helium at temperatures of approximately 16.000 ºK, with a pressure that can be 80 million atmospheres.
Of course, its composition has been studied based on patterns that have been suggested. It is intuited that its center of rocks has a size of approximately 7% of its total size, which is so small that scientists do not mention this nucleus when they talk about it. planet Jupiter.
It is true that it is thought that 93% of the volume of Jupiter is made up of gases, but we cannot consider that the gases on Jupiter have the same appearance as our atmosphere, but rather that they are represented more like a high-density aqueous medium. , which is highly compressed due to the gravitational pull of the planet.
It is speculated that in the center of Jupiter, the atoms of the metallized hydrogen molecules are fractured by the great pressure and transformed into ionized hydrogen. It is on its way up to its surface that hydrogen gradually becomes a kind of gaseous liquid. Because of this feature, there are no transition lines between Jupiter's hydrogen shells.
Composition and Temperature
If we could make a cut from its surface towards its interior, we would observe that there is a gradual descent into a condensed fog that would become denser and more opaque until it reached a lake of hydrogen in a liquid state.
This lake would be even denser and of high temperature, culminating in metallic hydrogen that is much denser and hotter (16000 K) until we reach the rock core, with a temperature of around 25.000 K and a pressure of about 80 million of atmospheres.
Spectroscopic studies that have been carried out by space explorers have been able to break down the strata of Jupiter's atmosphere. It has been concluded that Jupiter is composed of 86% hydrogen (H) 14% helium (He), a small amount of methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and water vapor (H2O).
The Great Red Spot
We have already indicated that Jupiter, named after the Roman god, is the largest planet in the solar system, having a size that exceeds the Earth about 317 times. It can be seen in the night skies, especially at times of the year when Jupiter and the Sun are opposite each other in the sky, which is observable from Earth. It is at this location that Jupiter is closest to Earth.
Those opposite positions between the Sun and Jupiter occur at intervals of 13 months. It is in this position that the sensitive flattening of Jupiter can best be observed. A large red spot has been observed on its surface, towards its southern area, being at a latitude of 35 °.
While the Earth and the terrestrial planets are solid bodies made up of a combination of silicates and iron, which are surrounded by a small amount of gases, Jupiter is essentially made up of hydrogen and a little helium, in a very similar way to the sun structure.
The journey of the Galileo Space Probe
The Galileo explorer that was built by NASA to study the planet Jupiter and its satellites, entered its atmosphere in 1995. For an hour, against a wind of 320 kilometers per hour, it was possible to prove that hydrogen predominates and that the temperature increases rapidly towards the depth of the planet. Jupiter was also shown to have a ring system, as is usual for all giant planets.
The ring system is made up of pieces of small rocks that come together around a rounded figure that is in motion, is large and very thin. Similarly, Jupiter has a large cyclone on its surface, known as the Great Red Spot. It was discovered by the great astronomer Cassini, about 300 years ago.
This cyclone has dimensions of 12 x 000 kilometers, which is twice the size of the Earth. Along with its sheer bulk, its duration and existence remain unexplained.
Studies indicate that a cyclone has to evolve and eventually disappear over time, but in the case of Jupiter, after 300 years of observation and study, it has been found that the Great Red Spot has hardly changed at all. The mechanism of its origins remains a mystery to science.
For more than 100 years, astronomers have claimed that the largest visible structure on Jupiter was the Great Red Spot. But currently, with the images that could be captured by the Cassini space probe, it has been possible to discover the existence of another structure of similar size and it was baptized as the Great Dark Spot.
The ballet of the Galilean Satellites
During the trip of the Galileo probe, carried out between 1989 and 1995, the asteroids Gaspra and Ida were observed very closely, discovering that Ida has its own moon, which was called Dactyl. In 1995, the Galileo probe sent back a module that was able to immerse itself in Jupiter's atmosphere for 1 hour.
It was destroyed after 200 km of immersion, due to the immense pressures to which Jupiter's atmosphere subjected it and the temperature reached, which was 460 ° C.
But that time and the travel path were enough to be able to determine the elements that make up Jupiter's atmosphere. A year earlier, in 1994, the Galileo probe found itself in a privileged position to observe how Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted the surface of Jupiter.
One of the most amazing things about planet Jupiter is that in its environment there is a real reduced solar system. Another issue that has been much discussed by the scientific community is that it could happen that the nucleus of Jupiter ignites and becomes one of the Stars. In addition, its more than 60 satellites are orbiting in its environment in a position close to its center line, just as the planets are orbiting around the Sun in our solar system.
The four Galilean moons of Jupiter
The four satellites of Jupiter discovered by Galileo Galilei: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto perform a ballet between them, which can be observed with a simple pair of 10×50 binoculars and if we have a 60mm diameter observation device, we will be able to observe two wide and dark belts or rings, which are in a parallel arrangement to the equator of this huge planet.
The voyage of the Cassini space probe
With respect to "Io", it has been determined that it has the largest volcanic formation in the solar system, with a length of more than 3600 kilometers, which makes it slightly larger than our Moon, which has 3 kilometers. .474,6 kilometres.
The discovery from «Io» wase possible thanks to the images that were captured by the Cassini space explorer, with the cloud whirlwinds of Jupiter as a background, being able to make ciertas guesses about the dimensions of that satellite.
It has been concluded that "Io" revolves around Jupiter, at a great speed and that it is at an altitude of 350.000 kilometers above the clouds of Jupiter, which is very similar to the distance between the Earth and the Moon. . Everything has been concluded from the information obtained by the Cassini probe, which managed to take images from a distance of about 10 million kilometers from Jupiter.
The Shoemaker-Levy 9
On its penultimate flyby, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 passed very close to the planet Jupiter in 1992 and the planet's atmosphere caused the comet to break into 20 pieces, but it stayed on track. Two years later, as it approached Jupiter again, the comet fragments crashed onto Jupiter's surface for 7 days.
The incident could be seen for weeks in all the wavelengths that exist and in almost all the astronomical observatories in the world, observing that a cloud of materials was produced over the site where most of the impacts occurred.
We hope that you have enjoyed the content of this article and that it stimulates you to continue investigating and acquiring knowledge about the great mysteries of our solar system.
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