Kepler's third law is the one that interests us the most. It states precisely that the period of time a planet takes to go around the sun squared is proportional to the average distance from the sun cubed. Here's the formula:. Note that as the distance of the planet from the sun is increased, the period, or time to make one orbit, will get longer. Kepler didn't know the reason for these laws, though he knew it had something to do with the Sun and its influence on the planets.
That had to wait 50 years for Isaac Newton to discover the universal law of gravitation. Closer planets revolve faster, more distant planets revolve slower. The answer lies in how gravity works. The force of gravity is a measure of the pull between two bodies. This force depends on a few things. First, it depends on the mass of the sun and on the mass of the planet you are considering. The heavier the planet, the stronger the pull. If you double the planet's mass, gravity pulls twice as hard.
On the other hand, the farther the planet is from the sun, the weaker the pull between the two. The force gets weaker quite rapidly. If you double the distance, the force is one-fourth. If you triple the separation, the force drops to one-ninth. Ten times the distance, one-hundredth the force. See the pattern? The force drops off with the square of the distance. Discovered in by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, Jupiter's rings were a surprise, as they are composed of small, dark particles and are difficult to see except when backlit by the Sun.
Data from the Galileo spacecraft indicate that Jupiter's ring system may be formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's small innermost moons. Jupiter took shape when the rest of the solar system formed about 4.
Jupiter took most of the mass left over after the formation of the Sun, ending up with more than twice the combined material of the other bodies in the solar system. In fact, Jupiter has the same ingredients as a star, but it did not grow massive enough to ignite. About 4 billion years ago, Jupiter settled into its current position in the outer solar system, where it is the fifth planet from the Sun.
The composition of Jupiter is similar to that of the Sun — mostly hydrogen and helium. Deep in the atmosphere, pressure and temperature increase, compressing the hydrogen gas into a liquid.
This gives Jupiter the largest ocean in the solar system — an ocean made of hydrogen instead of water. Scientists think that, at depths perhaps halfway to the planet's center, the pressure becomes so great that electrons are squeezed off the hydrogen atoms, making the liquid electrically conducting like metal. Jupiter's fast rotation is thought to drive electrical currents in this region, generating the planet's powerful magnetic field.
It is still unclear if deeper down, Jupiter has a central core of solid material or if it may be a thick, super-hot and dense soup. It could be up to 90, degrees Fahrenheit 50, degrees Celsius down there, made mostly of iron and silicate minerals similar to quartz.
The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet crush, melt, and vaporize spacecraft trying to fly into the planet. Jupiter's appearance is a tapestry of colorful cloud bands and spots. The gas planet likely has three distinct cloud layers in its "skies" that, taken together, span about 44 miles 71 kilometers.
The top cloud is probably made of ammonia ice, while the middle layer is likely made of ammonium hydrosulfide crystals. The innermost layer may be made of water ice and vapor.
The vivid colors you see in thick bands across Jupiter may be plumes of sulfur and phosphorus-containing gases rising from the planet's warmer interior. Jupiter's fast rotation — spinning once every 10 hours — creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones across long stretches. 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. The gas giant has the shortest day among all the planets in our system, its poles do not rotate with the same speed as its equator, and the planet does not experience seasons as we do here on Earth!
Jupiter travels at a speed of 47, kilometers per hour. At this rate, it takes While orbiting the Sun, Jupiter is up to million miles away and has an average speed of 47, kilometers per hour, which is nearly 29, miles per hour. Despite its enormous size , Jupiter has the shortest day among all planets in our solar system. The gas giant accumulated hydrogen and helium in the protoplanetary disk, and along with it the angular momentum of this gas.
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