Download Jupiter • The largest planet in the solar system

Jupiter
 The largest planet in the solar system.
 Stripes and swirls are cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water.
 Great Red Spot is a giant storm bigger than Earth that has raged for
hundreds of years.
 Surrounded by 53 confirmed moons, as well as 14 provisional ones.
 Has three rings, but they are very hard to see.
 Eleven times wider than Earth. If Earth were the size of a nickel, it would
be about as big as a basketball.
 Has the shortest day in the solar system…only about 10 hours.
 Makes a complete orbit around the sun in about 12 Earth years.
 Spins nearly upright and does not have seasons as extreme as other
planets do.
 Has the same ingredients as a star, but it did not grow massive enough to
ignite.
 The fifth planet from the sun.
 The composition is similar to that of the sun — mostly hydrogen and
helium.
 Took most of the mass left over after the formation of the sun, ending up
with more than twice the combined material of the other bodies in the solar
system.
 Home to the largest ocean in the solar system — an ocean made of liquid
hydrogen instead of water.
 As a gas giant, there is no true surface.
 The gas planet likely has three distinct cloud layers in its "skies”
Saturn
 The most distant of the five planets known to the ancients.
 Winds in the upper atmosphere reach 500 meters per second (1100+
mph)
 Rings are made mostly of water ice, and can contain "braided" rings,
ringlets, and "spokes"
 Ring system extends thousands of miles from the planet, yet the vertical
height is typically about 30 feet in the main rings.
 Fifty-three confirmed moons and another 9 provisional moons.
 Has many smaller "icy" satellites.
 Italian-born astronomer Cassini discovered a "division" between what are
now called the A and B rings of the ring system.
 The gravitational influence of the moon Mimas is responsible for the
Cassini Division, a 3000 mile wide gap in the ring system.
 Second largest planet in the solar system.
 Sixth planet from the Sun.
 Super-fast winds, combined with heat rising from within the planet's
interior, cause the yellow and gold bands visible in the atmosphere.
 Aurorae occur when charged particles spiral into a planet's atmosphere
along magnetic field lines.