Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System. Ancient Astronomers named Jupiter after the king of the Roman Gods. Jupiter is the 5th closest planet to our sun. The atmosphere of Jupiter consists of about 84 percent Hydrogen and about 15 percent helium, with small amounts of acetylene, ammonia, ethane, methane, phosphine, and water vapor.

Jupiter Facts You Might Not Know About If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 264 pounds on Jupiter. Jupiter has a mass 318 times greater than the Earth's and a diameter that is 11 times larger. The mass of Jupiter is 70% of the total mass of all the other planets in our Solar System. Jupiter's volume is large enough to contain 1,300 planets the size of Earth. Jupiter rotates faster than any planet in the Solar System. It rotates so quickly that the days is only 10 hours long... But it takes 12 Earth years for Jupiter to complete an orbit around the sun. The great red spot on Jupiter is a storm that has been going on for over 300 years. You can fit 100 Earths into Jupiter's great red spot. Jupiter has the biggest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede. It is even bigger than Mercury and Pluto. Jupiter has a ring just like Saturn and Uranus. The Planet has over 60 known satellites (moons) but most of them are extremely small and faint. Jupiter is covered by an ocean of hydrogen with a sludge-like consistency. Unlike other planets, Jupiter sends out a strong radio radiation that can be detected on Earth. In 1994, pieces of a comet called shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart and crashed into Jupiter. This left patches in Jupiter's atmosphere that lasted for many months.