King-of-the-planets

King of the planets

Mighty Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun and the largest in the Solar System-so big, in fact, that it’s 2.5 times more massive than all the other planets put together.Its strong gravitational pullgreatly affects the orbites of other bodies in the solar system. Jupiter’s fast rate of spin has strethed its surface clouds intobands, with spots (storms) and ripples where neighbouring bands swirl together.Severalcraft have visited Jupiter,including Gailleo,which orbited from 1995 to 2003.

The Jupiter system

Like a king surrounded by his courtiers, Jupiter is circles by great number of moons. The inner moon, including the four largest,areshown below. Ganymede,the largest, is bigger than the planet Mercury. Most of Jupiter other'moons are probably asteroids captured by the planet gravity

Jupiter profile

Diameter........142,984km(88,846miles)
Average surfaces
temperature......-121°C(-186°F)
One spin on axis...........9.9hours
One orbit of sun........11.9Earth years
Number of moon...........67

Blue planet

Neptune,the eighth and furthest of the planets from the sun,was discovered in 1846.Astronomers had noticed Uranus wasn’t following its expected path –there seemed to be an unseen body,perhaps an undiscovered planet,pulling on it. Two mathematicians-John Couch Adams in England and Urbain Le Verrier in France-calculated where in the sky the undiscovered planet must lie.Witin days, Neptune was spotted from an observatory in Germany.Neptune is slightly smaller than Uranus and looks bluer because its atmosphere contains mor methane.It has a deep, fluid mantle that is hot and dense and contains water, ammonia, and methane. Neptune also hasa barely visible system of rings. Its biggest moon ,Triton,resembles pluto and was likely captured by Neptune’s gravity in an encounterbillions of years ago.

Neptune profile 

Diameter.........49,528 km (30,775 miles),Average surface ,temperature.....-121°C(-330°F),One spin on axis........16.1 hours,One orbit of sun 163.7 Earth years, Number of moons......13.

Fastest known winds 

When Voyager 2 flew past Neptune in 1989, it photographed white clouds blown into streaks by winds of up to 2,100 kph (1,300 mph)-the fastest sustained winds in the solar system.This violent weather is thought to be powered by heat from inside Neptune since the planet is too far from the sun to absorb much of its warmth.

Ring system 

 Saturn’s main rings are 360,000 km (220,000 miles) wide, yet they are only 10m (30 ft)thick. A scale model of the rings made with a sheet of paper would be 3 km (2 miles) wide.Beyond the main rings are hazy outer rings, photographed by cassini while the sun was behind saturn (below).