Question

ASTRONOMY (please type the answer not write )

Describe Jupiter – be careful and thorough. The length of your description should be equivalent of one single-spaced typed page.

Answer 1

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. It is approximately 143,000 kilometers wide at its equator. Jupiter is like a star in composition. If Jupiter had been about 80 times more massive, it would have become a star rather than a planet.Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun. Jupiter's average distance from the sun is a little more than five times the distance from Earth to the sun. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter is usually the second brightest planet in the night sky, after Venus.

Jupiter is called a gas giant planet. Its atmosphere is made up of mostly hydrogen gas and helium gas, like the sun. The planet is covered in thick red, brown, yellow and white clouds. The clouds make the planet look like it has stripes.

Jupiter rotates, or spins, faster than any other planet. One rotation equals one day. Jupiter's day is only about 10 hours long. Jupiter’s orbit around the sun is elliptical, or oval-shaped. Jupiter takes 12 Earth years to make one revolution around the sun, so one year on Jupiter is equal to 12 years on Earth.

The temperature in the clouds of Jupiter is about minus 145 degrees Celsius . The temperature near the planet's center is much hotter. The core temperature may be about 24,000 degrees Celsius . That’s hotter than the surface of the sun

it has gravity 2.4 times more then the gravity on the surface of Earth. .

Jupiter has an extremely powerful magnetic field, like a giant magnet. Deep under Jupiter’s clouds is a huge ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen. On Earth, hydrogen is usually gas. But on Jupiter, the pressure is so great inside its atmosphere that the gas becomes liquid. As Jupiter spins, the swirling, liquid metal ocean creates the strongest magnetic field in the solar system. At the tops of the clouds, Jupiter’s magnetic field is 20 times stronger than the magnetic field on Earth.

Jupiter has 53 named moons. Scientists have discovered 14 more. But those 14 moons do not have official names. Scientists now think Jupiter has a total of 67 moons. The planet’s four largest moons are Ganymede , Callisto , Io , and Europa.

The largest of Jupiter’s moons is Ganymede. It is the largest moon in the solar system. Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury and three-fourths the size of Mars. Ganymede is the only moon in the solar system known to have its own magnetic field. Ganymede and Callisto have many craters and appear to be made of ice and rocky material.

Io has many active volcanoes. The volcanoes produce gases containing sulfur. The yellow-orange surface of Io is most likely made of sulfur from the volcanic eruptions. Europa is the smallest of the Galilean satellites. Europa's surface is mostly water ice. Beneath the ice may be an ocean of water or slushy ice. Europa is thought to have twice as much water as Earth.