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Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun and is about 770 million kilometres from it. It takes almost twelve years for Jupiter to orbit the sun - once!! What a long time!!! Even though Jupiter is larger than planet earth, it spins in less than 10 hours, whereas Earth spins in 24 hours. This is the fastest of any planet. This rapid spinning causes powerful winds that pushes the clouds into colourful bands, streaks and swirls that circle planet. If Jupiter was hollow, it could fit 1300 planet earth's inside of it! That's bigggggg! The temperature on the surface is very, very, very cold - over -150 degrees below freezing! and that's in the daytime! The centre of Jupiter is very, very, very hot! It is over 28,000 degrees. Jupiter is made up mostly from hydrogen. These are always moving. It takes approximately four months for the clouds to travel one thousand kilometres West. The red spot has always been a great mystery to astronomers. It was first seen over one hundred years ago through a telescope from earth. No one knows how or when it was formed. It is thought that it is an enormous storm, a massive hurricane, much more powerful than anything that we experience on earth, that is twice as big as our planet!!! Over the past years, it has shrunk, grown, become brighter, become duller. It does not change position, though. Jupiter has sixteen moons and many more waiting to be discovered. The smallest moon is under 80 kilometres across. The four largest moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callista circle close to the planet. These are called the Galilean moons, after being discovered by the great Italian scientist Galileo, who saw them in 1610 with his small, home-made telescope.
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