Key facts
- Scale fact
- 139,820 kmdiameter
- Estimated age
- ~4.5 billion years
- Composition
- Hydrogen and helium
- Temperature
- ~110 K cloud tops
Jupiter
139,820 kmdiameter
Visual creditJuno 2019 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons
Details
Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, with about 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets combined. It spins once in just under 10 hours, the shortest day of any planet.
Jupiter rotates in about 9.9 hours despite its 140,000-kilometer diameter, producing strong banded circulation and a visibly flattened shape. Juno’s gravity measurements indicate that the heavy-element-rich central region is diffuse rather than a sharply bounded solid core. Above it, hydrogen changes continuously from gas to dense fluid and metallic hydrogen as pressure rises.
The planet’s magnetic field traps intense radiation and inflates a magnetosphere that can extend millions of kilometers toward the Sun and far beyond Saturn’s orbit on the night side.
Links
- Editorial guides
- Universe journey
- Asteroid belt & Jupiter
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- Jupiter on Wikipedia
Size neighbors
Objects near Jupiter on the scale
On the logarithmic size axis, Jupiter falls between HLX-1 and Luhman 16 B. The band uses nearby Gas giant planet records.
Sources
References for Jupiter
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- Jupiter — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Juno 2019 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill, Public domain)
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.