Jupiter
Jupiter
• Distance 800 million km (500 million miles)
• Diameter: 143,000 x 133,000 km (88,000 x
80,000 miles) or 11 x 10 Earths
• Rotates in 10 hours
• Polar Flattening: 1/16 (Earth = 1/298)
• Circles Sun in 12 years
• Mass: 318 Earths
• Volume: 1321 Earths
• Density: 1.326 gm/cc
• Four large satellites, 59 others
The Largest Planet
Pioneer 10
and 11 were
first to
Jupiter, 1973
Pioneer 10-11, 1972-1974
Voyager I-II
1977-1979
Galileo 1989-1995
Galileo’s Atmospheric Probe
Io, Europa and Jupiter
The Great Red Spot
Jupiter is Hot Inside
Jupiter
Movie
Jupiter Has a Very Thin Ring
The Moons of
Jupiter:
Callisto
Europa
Ganymede
Io
Callisto
This is what
everyone expected
Jupiter’s moons to
look like.
This was about the
last thing that
looked like we
expected it to.
Valhalla
Basin,
Callisto
Ganymede:
Largest
Moon in the
Solar
System
Close-up of
Ganymede
Europa
Europa’s Icy Crust
Unexpected Io
An Eruption on Io
Loki’s Molten Sulfur Lake
Lava Flows on Io
Eruption on Io
Amalthea
The Impact of Comet
Schumacher-Levy
For the first time ever, in 1994 we
witnessed the impact of a comet
with a planet.
Comet
Schumacher
-Levy
Impact!
A still-hot
impact site
rotates into
view
(infrared
view)
Impact
Fireball
Impact of
Comet
SchumacherLevy 9, 1993
Impact as Seen by Galileo