Interesting Facts About Jupiter and Its Moons

Jupiter is the largest planet in solar system, twice as massive as all the other planets, moons and asteroids in solar system put together. More than 90 percent of Jupiter’s mass consists of swirling gases, mostly hydrogen and helium; in this incredibly thick, dense atmosphere, storms of incredible magnitude rage and swirl. The largest of these storms is the Great Red Spot, which is often visible from Earth through even a small telescope.

Other notable facts about Jupiter are as follows:

• A day on Jupiter is only 9 hours 56 minutes which makes it fastest rotating planet / body in solar system.
• Jupiter is 1,300 times Earth’s volume and 320 times Earth’s mass.
• Jupiter has a rocky core made of material thought to be similar to Earth’s crust and mantle. Around this core, in these extreme conditions, it is likely that a thick layer of compressed hydrogen is present; the hydrogen in this layer probably acts like metal, and may be the cause of Jupiter’s intense magnetic field, which is five times greater than even that of the Sun.
• As of now , there are 67 known moons of Jupiter; may of which are only a few miles across. However, four of them—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto—are about the size of Earth’s Moon or larger.

Atmosphere of Jupiter

• Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is composed of about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume or fraction of gas molecules.
• There are also traces of carbon, ethane, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen and sulphur. The outermost layer of the atmosphere contains crystals of frozen ammonia.

The Great Red Spot at Jupiter

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a huge windstorm more than 14,000 kilometers wide and 26,000 kilometers long. The storm that perpetuates the Spot is apparently powered by the upwelling of hot, energetic gases from deep inside Jupiter’s atmosphere which produce winds that blow counter clockwise around the Spot at 400 kilometers per hour. Its red colour may be because of Sulphur or Phosphorus.  Beneath it are three white, oval areas; each is a storm about the size of the planet Mars. There are thousands of huge and powerful storms on Jupiter, and many of them can last for a very long time.

Great Red Spot has been going on for at least 400 years, and which was first studied by Galileo Galilei, remains the biggest and most visible Jovian storm yet recorded.

Jupiter is the archetypal gas giant planet—so much so that gas giants are often called Jovian planets.

Rings of Jupiter

Jupiter has several very faint rings. They are nothing like Saturn’s enormously developed and beautiful rings, but they can be detected through careful observations with instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope.

Possible Impacts of Jupiter on life on Earth?

Some astronomers believe that Jupiter helps Earth to remain habitable because it protects Earth from some comets, which in absence of Jupiter would have collided with Earth. The gravity of Jupiter slings these fast moving ice balls out of solar system before they can get closer to Earth. The scientists observed in 1994 a comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaking into several fragments and crashing on to Jupiter’s atmosphere.

However, this theory has a negative side also. Sometimes, Jupiter can also divert a comet more towards earth. For example, in 18th century, a Comet Lexell had streaked past Earth at a distance of only one million miles. It had passed close to Jupiter which diverted it straight towards Earth, but somehow it missed earth.

Important Moons of Jupiter

Io – the most geologically active body in solar system

Io, the closest of the Galilean moons to Jupiter, is affected so strongly by the gravitational tides exerted on it by Jupiter and the other moons that it is the most geologically active body in our solar system. The Voyager spacecraft first detected huge volcanoes spewing lava and ash into space, and the surface is completely recoated with fresh lava every few decades.

Impact of Jupiter on its Io – Io Torus

• Jupiter’s tremendous gravitational influence on its surroundings causes tidal activity on the Galilean moons.
• The tides alternately stretch and compress the cores of these moons.
• Another important influence exerted by Jupiter on its moons comes from the giant planet’s magnetic field.
• Jupiter spins so fast, and contains so much mass, that the magnetic field generated by it engulfs the nearby moons and bathes them with ionization and charged particles.
• Meanwhile, powerful volcanoes that erupt on the surface of Io eject large amounts of small particles into space; many of them are swept up into Jupiter’s magnetosphere, forming a doughnut-shaped torus of volcanic particles that form an ethereal envelope around the Jovian environment. This is called Io torus.

Europa

• Europa is the second closest to Jupiter of the four Galilean moons. Its surface is covered with frozen water ice.
• Studies by the Galileo spacecraft show that the ice has been moving and shifting much the same way that densely packed ice behaves on Earth’s polar oceans.

Ganymede

Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, about one-and-a-half times as wide as Earth’s Moon. It has a very thin atmosphere and its own magnetic field.

Calisto

Callisto, the furthest away from Jupiter of the four Galilean moons, is scarred and pitted by ancient craters. Its surface may be the oldest of all the solid bodies in the solar system.