See also: Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their moons and Satellite system (astronomy) Encyclopedia - the brightest bodies". IMCCE. Archived from the original on July 24, 2023 . Retrieved May 29, 2023.

A 340-kilogram titanium atmospheric probe was released from the spacecraft in July 1995, entering Jupiter's atmosphere on December 7. [61] It parachuted through 150km (93mi) of the atmosphere at a speed of about 2,575km/h (1600mph) [61] and collected data for 57.6minutes until the spacecraft was destroyed. [177] The Galileo orbiter itself experienced a more rapid version of the same fate when it was deliberately steered into the planet on September 21, 2003. NASA destroyed the spacecraft to avoid any possibility of the spacecraft crashing into and possibly contaminating the moon Europa, which may harbour life. [176] The existence of the planet Jupiter has been known since ancient times. It is visible to the naked eye in the night sky and can occasionally be seen in the daytime when the Sun is low. [226] To the Babylonians, this planet represented their god Marduk, [227] chief of their pantheon from the Hammurabi period. [228] They used Jupiter's roughly 12-year orbit along the ecliptic to define the constellations of their zodiac. [227] Jupiter is believed to be the oldest planet in the Solar System. [23] Current models of Solar System formation suggest that Jupiter formed at or beyond the snow line: a distance from the early Sun where the temperature was sufficiently cold for volatiles such as water to condense into solids. [24] The planet began as a solid core, which then accumulated its gaseous atmosphere. As a consequence, the planet must have formed before the solar nebula was fully dispersed. [25] During its formation, Jupiter's mass gradually increased until it had 20 times the mass of the Earth, approximately half of which was made up of silicates, ices and other heavy-element constituents. [23] When the proto-Jupiter grew larger than 50 Earth masses it created a gap in the solar nebula. [23] Thereafter, the growing planet reached its final mass in 3–4 million years. [23]

Gautier, D.; Conrath, B.; Flasar, M.; Hanel, R.; Kunde, V.; Chedin, A.; Scott, N. (1981). "The helium abundance of Jupiter from Voyager". Journal of Geophysical Research. 86 (A10): 8713–8720. Bibcode: 1981JGR....86.8713G. doi: 10.1029/JA086iA10p08713. hdl: 2060/19810016480. S2CID 122314894.

Jupiter has a faint planetary ring system composed of three main segments: an inner torus of particles known as the halo, a relatively bright main ring, and an outer gossamer ring. [125] These rings appear to be made of dust, whereas Saturn's rings are made of ice. [65] :65 The main ring is most likely made out of material ejected from the satellites Adrastea and Metis, which is drawn into Jupiter because of the planet's strong gravitational influence. New material is added by additional impacts. [126] In a similar way, the moons Thebe and Amalthea are believed to produce the two distinct components of the dusty gossamer ring. [126] There is evidence of a fourth ring that may consist of collisional debris from Amalthea that is strung along the same moon's orbit. [127] Orbit and rotation Orbit of Jupiter and other outer Solar System planets See also: Jupiter in fiction and Planets in astrology §Jupiter Jupiter, woodcut from a 1550 edition of Guido Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae The relationships Ted formed and the time he spent working the land on the ranch in California had a huge impact on his life, so much so he later decided to make the Golden State his home. Jupiter is a gas giant, being primarily composed of gas and liquid rather than solid matter. It is the largest planet in the Solar System, with a diameter of 142,984km (88,846mi) at its equator, giving it a volume 1,321 times that of the Earth. [2] [38] Its average density, 1.326g/cm 3, [d] is lower than those of the four terrestrial planets. [40] [41] CompositionIt turned out very well. I was there for 35 years in the end, on this piece of land. I think I lost… I think I sacrificed a fair amount by doing that. The book had become so important in the UK, it was very well known. If I’d lived in the UK then I could probably have used that notoriety, or whatever you want to call it, I could probably have used that to have developed a completely different life to the one that I have actually led. I’m not at all sure it would have been a better one, no idea at all. Jupiter has a low axial tilt, thus making it that the poles always receive less solar radiation than the planet's equatorial region. Convection within the interior of the planet transports energy to the poles, balancing out temperatures at the cloud layer. [55] :54 Great Red Spot and other vortices Close-up of the Great Red Spot imaged by the Juno spacecraft in April 2018

Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C. (1989). "Jupiter". Oxford English Dictionary. Vol.8 (2nded.). Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-861220-9. A 2016 paper reports that trapezoidal rule was used by Babylonians before 50 BCE for integrating the velocity of Jupiter along the ecliptic. [147] In his 2nd century work the Almagest, the Hellenistic astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus constructed a geocentric planetary model based on deferents and epicycles to explain Jupiter's motion relative to Earth, giving its orbital period around Earth as 4332.38days, or 11.86years. [148] Ground-based telescope research Galileo's drawings of Jupiter and its "Medicean Stars" from Sidereus Nuncius The Great Red Spot is larger than the Earth. [111] Mathematical models suggest that the storm is stable and will be a permanent feature of the planet. [112] However, it has significantly decreased in size since its discovery. Initial observations in the late 1800s showed it to be approximately 41,000km (25,500mi) across. By the time of the Voyager flybys in 1979, the storm had a length of 23,300km (14,500mi) and a width of approximately 13,000km (8,000mi). [113] Hubble observations in 1995 showed it had decreased in size to 20,950km (13,020mi), and observations in 2009 showed the size to be 17,910km (11,130mi). As of 2015 [update], the storm was measured at approximately 16,500 by 10,940km (10,250 by 6,800mi), [113] and was decreasing in length by about 930km (580mi) per year. [111] [114] In October 2021, a Juno flyby mission measured the depth of the Great Red Spot, putting it at around 300–500 kilometres (190–310mi). [115]

Jones, Alexander (1999). Astronomical papyri from Oxyrhynchus. American Philosophical Society. pp.62–63. ISBN 978-0-87169-233-7. It is now possible to trace the medieval symbols for at least four of the five planets to forms that occur in some of the latest papyrus horoscopes ([ P.Oxy. ] 4272, 4274, 4275 [...]). That for Jupiter is an obvious monogram derived from the initial letter of the Greek name. Main article: Jupiter mass Jupiter with its moon Europa on the left. Earth's diameter is 11 times smaller than Jupiter, and 4 times larger than Europa. By mass, Jupiter's atmosphere is approximately 76% hydrogen and 24% helium, though, because helium atoms are more massive than hydrogen molecules, Jupiter's upper atmosphere is about 90% hydrogen and 10% helium by volume. [42] The atmosphere also contains trace amounts of methane, water vapour, ammonia, and silicon-based compounds as well as fractional amounts of carbon, ethane, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen, phosphine, and sulfur. [43] The outermost layer of the atmosphere contains crystals of frozen ammonia. [44] Through infrared and ultraviolet measurements, trace amounts of benzene and other hydrocarbons have also been found. [45] The interior of Jupiter contains denser materials—by mass it is roughly 71% hydrogen, 24% helium, and 5% other elements. [46] [47]

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, and slightly less than one one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter orbits the Sun at a distance of 5.20 AU (778.5 Gm) with an orbital period of 11.86 years. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus, and it has been observed since prehistoric times. It was named after Jupiter, the chief deity of ancient Roman religion. There was an island somewhere in the South Seas where people were supposed to be terribly poor but the pictures showed the most beautiful beaches, with tropical trees and fruit and stuff like that. There were a lot of men on the beach and they were absolutely beautifully brown, they had glistening brown bodies, and they were dragging huge amounts of fish in from the sea. This kind of contradicted the idea of poverty. If that’s poverty, I wouldn’t mind some of that. It was such a contradiction and I thought, well this is ridiculous. Despite having done the work that I’d done, I realised I was really very ignorant about the world. Most people were then.In late 1973, sponsored by The Sunday Times, Simon began travelling around the world on a 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle. For four years he travelled over 64,000 miles (103,000km) through 45 countries. Most accounts from his trip are detailed in his book, Jupiter's Travels, [2] a b "Jupiter's Unknown Journey Revealed". ScienceDaily. Lund University. March 22, 2019. Archived from the original on March 22, 2019 . Retrieved March 25, 2019.