Jupiter

Jupiter is the 5th planet from the Sun and is the largest planet in The Solar System. Jupiter is known as "The Giant Planet", because it is largest planet in our Solar System. Jupiter is the start of the Outer Planets, Gas Giants, or the Jovian Planets.

Overview
Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System. It is so large that about 1000 Earths could fit inside this giant. Jupiter has very unique cloud features. The upper atmosphere of Jupiter is divided into cloud belts and zones. They are made primarily of ammonia crystals, sulfur, and mixtures of the two compounds. Jupiter also has the shortest days of all of the planets in The Solar System. It turns on its axis once every 9 hours and 55 minutes. The rapid rotation flattens the planet slightly, giving it an oblate shape. Jupiter orbits and goes around the sun every 11.8 Earth Years. From our point of view on Earth, it appears to move slowly in the sky, taking months to move from one constellation to another. The ancient Babylonians were the first to record their sightings of Jupiter. This was around the 7th or 8th century BC. Jupiter is named after the king of the Roman gods. To the Greeks, it represented Zeus, the god of thunder. The Mesopotamians saw Jupiter as the god Marduk and patron of the city of Babylon. Germanic tribes saw this planet as Donar, or Thor. The Great Red Spot is a huge storm on Jupiter. It has raged for at least 350 years. It is so large that three Earths could fit inside it. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. Jupiter’s moons are sometimes called the Jovian satellites, the largest of these are Ganymede, Callisto Io and Europa. Ganymede measures 5,268 km across, making it larger than the planet Mercury. Jupiter has a thin ring system. Its rings are composed mainly of dust particles ejected from some of Jupiter’s smaller worlds during impacts from incoming comets and asteroids. The ring system begins some 92,000 kilometers above Jupiter’s cloud tops and stretches out to more than 225,000 km from the planet. They are between 2,000 to 12,500 kilometers thick.