Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

I am secure enough in my blogging that I can, once again, bring you Space Saturday on Sunday. This week I bring you Jupiter!

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Jupiter is the fifth plane from the sun and the largest in our solar system. Jupiter has some 63 natural satellites (or moons if you will) with the four Galilean moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto) being the largest. Jupiter is by far the most massive planet at about 320x the mass of the Earth (1.899×10^27 kg). The composition of Jupiter is mostly gasses (hydrogen and helium) so the boundry between planet and atmosphere is somewhat difficult to define. One of Jupiter’s most well known objects is the Giant Red Spot (pictured left from the American Museum of Natural History and in large image at top). The Giant Red Spot is a storm that is at least 340 years old and could fit two or three Earths inside. It was also discovered that Jupiter has some faint planetary rings caused by dust from its surrounding satellites. There have been numerous explorations by Jupiter including the Cassini-Huygens mission on its way to Saturn. The Cassini flyby captured the most high resolution images of Jupiter to date. The image at top is one of those pictures and should be clicked to see the beautiful detail of the planet in a larger image.

To see more astronomy photographs, check out my Space Saturday Archive.

I have my car back! Whoo hoo!
Ή χάρις του κυρίου ημων Ίησου Χριστου μεθ’ υμων.