Jupiter is all about big numbers. One example is the length of its year: more than 10,000 Jovian days.
Jupiter is more than five times farther from the Sun than Earth is. At that distance, it takes the solar system’s largest planet almost 12 Earth years to make a single orbit around the Sun. That’s the length of a single year on the giant planet. But Jupiter spins like crazy, so a day lasts only about 10 hours. That means more than 10,000 sunrises and sunsets in every Jovian year.
The planet’s high-speed rotation has several effects. It forces gas near the equator outward. That makes Jupiter several thousand miles wider through its equator than through the poles.
The rotation also stretches the clouds at the top of Jupiter’s atmosphere into bands that circle the entire planet. Each band is thousands of miles wide. And the bands top out at different altitudes. That gives us a look at various layers in the atmosphere. The layers have slightly different mixes of chemicals, so the bands are tinted subtle shades of white, red, brown, and tan – colorful stripes for a giant planet.
Jupiter is in great view this month. It looks like a brilliant star, high in the east at nightfall. Tonight, it’s well to the lower left of the Moon. But the gap will narrow during the night, so they’ll be closer as they set in the wee hours of the morning. And they’ll be closer still tomorrow night. We’ll have more about that tomorrow.
Script by Damond Benningfield