What is jupiter named after

With no solid surface to slow them down, Jupiter's spots can persist for many years. Stormy Jupiter is swept by over a dozen prevailing winds, some reaching up to miles per hour kilometers per hour at the equator. The Great Red Spot, a swirling oval of clouds twice as wide as Earth, has been observed on the giant planet for more than years.

More recently, three smaller ovals merged to form the Little Red Spot, about half the size of its larger cousin. Anticyclones, which rotate in the opposite direction, are colder at the top but warmer at the bottom. The findings also indicate these storms are far taller than expected, with some extending 60 miles kilometers below the cloud tops and others, including the Great Red Spot, extending over miles kilometers.

This surprising discovery demonstrates that the vortices cover regions beyond those where water condenses and clouds form, below the depth where sunlight warms the atmosphere. With their gravity data, the Juno team was able to constrain the extent of the Great Red Spot to a depth of about miles kilometers below the cloud tops.

Belts and Zones In addition to cyclones and anticyclones, Jupiter is known for its distinctive belts and zones — white and reddish bands of clouds that wrap around the planet. Strong east-west winds moving in opposite directions separate the bands. Juno previously discovered that these winds, or jet streams, reach depths of about 2, miles roughly 3, kilometers. Researchers are still trying to solve the mystery of how the jet streams form. But at deeper levels, below the water clouds, the opposite is true — which reveals a similarity to our oceans.

Over time, mission scientists determined these atmospheric phenomena are extremely resilient, remaining in the same location. Juno data also indicates that, like hurricanes on Earth, these cyclones want to move poleward, but cyclones located at the center of each pole push them back. This balance explains where the cyclones reside and the different numbers at each pole. The Jovian magnetosphere is the region of space influenced by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field.

It balloons , to 2 million miles 1 to 3 million kilometers toward the Sun seven to 21 times the diameter of Jupiter itself and tapers into a tadpole-shaped tail extending more than million miles 1 billion kilometers behind Jupiter, as far as Saturn's orbit. Jupiter's enormous magnetic field is 16 to 54 times as powerful as that of the Earth. It rotates with the planet and sweeps up particles that have an electric charge.

Near the planet, the magnetic field traps swarms of charged particles and accelerates them to very high energies, creating intense radiation that bombards the innermost moons and can damage spacecraft. Jupiter's magnetic field also causes some of the solar system's most spectacular aurorae at the planet's poles. Introduction Jupiter is the fifth planet from our Sun and is, by far, the largest planet in the solar system — more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined.

The color of the storm, which usually varies from brick red to slightly brown, may come from small amounts of sulfur and phosphorus in the ammonia crystals in Jupiter's clouds. The spot has been shrinking for quite some time, although the rate may be slowing in recent years. Jupiter's gargantuan magnetic field is the strongest of all the planets in the solar system at nearly 20, times the strength of Earth's. It traps electrically charged particles in an intense belt of electrons and other electrically charged particles that regularly blasts the planet's moons and rings with radiation more than 1, times the lethal level for a human, enough to damage even heavily shielded spacecraft, such as NASA's Galileo probe.

The magnetosphere of Jupiter swells out some , to 2 million miles 1 million to 3 million kilometers toward the sun and tapers to a tail extending more than million miles 1 billion km behind the massive planet. Jupiter also spins faster than any other planet, taking a little under 10 hours to complete a turn on its axis, compared with 24 hours for Earth.

This rapid spin makes Jupiter bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles. Jupiter broadcasts radio waves strong enough to detect on Earth. These come in two forms — strong bursts that occur when Io, the closest of Jupiter's large moons, passes through certain regions of Jupiter's magnetic field, and continuous radiation from Jupiter's surface and high-energy particles in its radiation belts. Average distance from the sun : ,, miles ,, km. By comparison: 5.

Perihelion closest approach to the sun : ,, miles ,, km. Aphelion farthest distance from the sun : ,, miles ,, km. With four large moons and many smaller moons in orbit around it, Jupiter by itself forms a kind of miniature solar system.

Jupiter has 79 known moons, which are mostly named after the paramours of Roman gods. Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system, and is larger than Mercury and Pluto. It is also the only moon known to have its own magnetic field. The moon has at least one ocean between layers of ice, although it may contain several layers of both ice and water, stacked on top of one another.

The most famous example is Pioneer 10 , the American spacecraft which was the first to get close enough to collect useful information about the planet. Ancient Roman astronomers had identified seven natural objects in the sky: five bright planets, as well as the Sun and the Moon. These seven objects were easily visible from Earth with the naked eye because of their size and brightness. The Romans decided to name these bodies after some of their most important gods. Accordingly, early Roman astronomers named the largest planet after their most powerful god, Jupiter.

In Roman mythology, Jupiter or Zeus in Greek mythology is the god of the sky and the king of the gods. Neptune, the planet farthest from the Sun it makes a solar revolution once every years , was first seen by telescope in by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, using the mathematical calculations of French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier and British astronomer John Couch Adams.

There was some discussion of naming the planet after Le Verrier, but ultimately Neptune, which has a vivid blue color, got its name from the Roman god of the sea. Pluto, which was classified as a planet in before being stripped of that celestial honor in , was named after the Roman god of the underworld—thanks to the suggestion of an year-old English schoolgirl named Venetia Burney.

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