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30 sourced facts

Fun Facts About Jupiter

The biggest planet has the shortest day and a moon bigger than Mercury. True facts about Jupiter.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a storm bigger than Earth.

Jupiter spins so fast that a day there lasts less than 10 hours.

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury.

Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest.

Jupiter has no solid surface.

Jupiter has around 95 known moons.

Galileo discovered Jupiter’s four biggest moons in 1610.

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanic place in the solar system.

Jupiter’s moon Europa probably hides an ocean under its ice.

Jupiter has faint rings.

A year on Jupiter lasts about 12 Earth years.

Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field of any planet.

Jupiter has auroras bigger than Earth.

A comet smashed into Jupiter in 1994.

Jupiter’s gravity may protect Earth from some comets.

Jupiter is often the fourth-brightest object in the night sky.

Jupiter is named after the king of the Roman gods.

Jupiter’s stripes are bands of clouds moving in opposite directions.

Jupiter’s top clouds are made of ammonia ice.

The Great Red Spot is shrinking.

Ganymede is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field.

Callisto is one of the most heavily cratered objects in the solar system.

Jupiter gives off more heat than it receives from the Sun.

Europe’s JUICE mission is heading to Jupiter’s icy moons.

Fun Facts About Jupiter: all 30, explained

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a storm bigger than Earth.
The Great Red Spot is a giant storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere that has been observed for well over 150 years. It has been shrinking, but it is still wider than our planet.
Source: Great Red Spot (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter spins so fast that a day there lasts less than 10 hours.
Jupiter is the biggest planet in the solar system, yet it completes one rotation in about 9 hours and 56 minutes, the shortest day of any planet. The fast spin makes it bulge at the equator.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury.
Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. It is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field and is thought to hide a salty ocean under its icy crust.
Source: Ganymede (moon) (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined.
Jupiter’s mass is about 318 times that of Earth and roughly two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in the solar system put together.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest.
It is about 11 times as wide as Earth, and more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside it.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter has no solid surface.
It is a gas giant made mostly of hydrogen and helium, getting denser and hotter toward a possible rocky core.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter has around 95 known moons.
The count keeps rising as telescopes find small, distant moons.
Source: Moons of Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Galileo discovered Jupiter’s four biggest moons in 1610.
Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are called the Galilean moons. Seeing them orbit Jupiter helped show that not everything circles Earth.
Source: Galilean moons (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanic place in the solar system.
Tidal squeezing from Jupiter heats Io’s interior, powering hundreds of active volcanoes.
Source: Io (moon) (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter’s moon Europa probably hides an ocean under its ice.
Scientists think the ocean holds more water than all of Earth’s oceans, making Europa a target in the search for life.
Source: Europa (moon) (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter has faint rings.
They are made of dust and were discovered by the Voyager 1 probe in 1979.
Source: Rings of Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
A year on Jupiter lasts about 12 Earth years.
Jupiter orbits the Sun at an average of about 778 million kilometers.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field of any planet.
It is about 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s and traps intense radiation belts around the planet.
Source: Magnetosphere of Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter has auroras bigger than Earth.
They glow at the poles in ultraviolet light and are powered partly by material from the moon Io.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has orbited Jupiter since 2016.
Juno studies the planet’s interior, gravity and magnetic field from a polar orbit.
Source: Juno (spacecraft) (Wikipedia) · Fact card
A comet smashed into Jupiter in 1994.
Fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter over several days, leaving dark scars larger than Earth.
Source: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter’s gravity may protect Earth from some comets.
Its huge gravity pulls in or flings away many objects, though scientists still debate how much it shields Earth.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter is often the fourth-brightest object in the night sky.
Only the Moon and Venus are usually brighter, and sometimes Mars at close approach.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter is named after the king of the Roman gods.
Many of its moons are named after figures from myths about Jupiter, or Zeus in Greek myth.
Source: Jupiter (mythology) (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter’s stripes are bands of clouds moving in opposite directions.
Light zones and dark belts are separated by powerful jet streams.
Source: Atmosphere of Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter’s top clouds are made of ammonia ice.
Lower layers are thought to contain ammonium hydrosulfide and water clouds.
Source: Atmosphere of Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
The Great Red Spot is shrinking.
It was about three Earths wide in the late 1800s and is now a little wider than one Earth.
Source: Great Red Spot (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Ganymede is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field.
It probably comes from a molten iron core inside the moon.
Source: Ganymede (moon) (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Callisto is one of the most heavily cratered objects in the solar system.
Its ancient surface has barely changed for billions of years.
Source: Callisto (moon) (Wikipedia) · Fact card
The first spacecraft to fly past Jupiter was Pioneer 10, in 1973.
It sent back the first close-up images of the planet.
Source: Pioneer 10 (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter gives off more heat than it receives from the Sun.
It is still slowly releasing heat left over from its formation.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Jupiter would need to be about 80 times more massive to become a star.
That is roughly the minimum mass needed to start hydrogen fusion.
Source: Jupiter (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Thousands of asteroids share Jupiter’s orbit.
The Trojan asteroids gather in two groups ahead of and behind Jupiter. NASA’s Lucy mission launched in 2021 to visit them.
Source: Jupiter trojan (Wikipedia) · Fact card
A NASA spacecraft is on its way to study Europa.
Europa Clipper launched in October 2024 and is due to arrive at Jupiter in 2030.
Source: Europa Clipper (Wikipedia) · Fact card
Europe’s JUICE mission is heading to Jupiter’s icy moons.
The European Space Agency’s probe launched in 2023 and will eventually orbit Ganymede.
Source: Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Wikipedia) · Fact card

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