Facts about Jupiter
- 09
Rotating faster than any other planet, Jupiter completes a full rotation in just under 10 hours, causing its equator to bulge noticeably outward.
- 08
At least 95 times more massive than Earth, Jupiter contains more than twice the combined mass of all other planets in our solar system.
- 07
Jupiter radiates approximately 1.6 times more heat than it receives from the Sun, warming its internal core to around 24,000 Kelvin through residual gravitational compression from its formation 4.6 billion years ago.
- 06
Orbiting Jupiter every 3.5 days, Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system with over 400 active volcanoes reshaping its surface constantly.
- 05
The four largest moons of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo in 1610, are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, with Ganymede being the solar system's largest moon at 5,268 kilometers in diameter.
- 04
In 1994, the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet collided with Jupiter in a series of 21 impacts, with the largest fragment creating an explosion more powerful than all nuclear weapons on Earth combined.
- 03
Jupiter's magnetic field is approximately 14 times stronger than Earth's, generated by a vast ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen beneath its cloud layers.
- 02
A single storm in Jupiter's atmosphere called the Great Red Spot has persisted for at least 350 years and spans roughly 16,000 kilometers across.
- 01
With a diameter of 142,984 kilometers, Jupiter is large enough to fit 1,321 Earths inside its volume.